This said, when I started reading I found it very pleasant. This might seem strange way to describe a book about girl with cancer, but that is exactly how it felt. Pleasant. I couldn't help but think to myself, "This is a great book, but it's not that great". The way everyone else had hyped it up made me a little disappointed.
But as the story progressed, the "plot twists" (the use of an apostrophe is because they were extremely predictable plot twists, albeit in an written in an extremely well and unpredictable way) changed my opinion. It is beautiful thing when an author can make you get emotionally involved with the characters they are writing about, and how John Green achieved that in just 313 pages I'll never know. It took JK Rowling 7 books (for me, at least). I found myself hoping against all odds that this would have a semi-happy ending, but knowing that it wouldn't. It's like watching "Romeo and Juliet", the Baz Lurham edition. You know what's going to happen, but all the same there is a tiny part of you that thinks, "Maybe this time, Juliet will wake up and see Romeo and they can go be in love and shallow and vain together". But, invariably, it never does.
That little bit of hope for me was broken a few pages from the end. I started crying. Ugly crying. I had to put the book down and fetch a tissue box because I did not want to get snot all over Tara's book. Tears were streaming down my face as I turned the last page. After finishing, I had to sit for a few moments and revel in this pure, raw, human emotion I was feeling. And if a book can make you feel what I was feeling just then, than that book is a work of art.
TFioS is everything a book should be. It's funny, heartfelt, witty has a few deep (and slightly pretentious- but who am I to judge?) meanings in there with just the right amount of video game playing, America's Next Top Model and various other pop culture references in there. The novel doesn't just make you feel, but it also inspires you to do.
I thoroughly recommend TFioS to anyone who can grab a hand on it. The only disappointment was that it didn't and in the middle of a
