FROM THYSHELF - The Fault In Our Stars: A star-crossed love story

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
-Cassius, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

I finished reading this beautiful book about love and how beautiful it is. Read on!

The Fault In Our Stars
by John Green

The story is about a young girl named Hazel who is battling cancer almost all her life. She doesn't feel like she is a teenager because she is already losing hope. Until She meets Augustus Waters, a young boy who also had cancer. They became friends and Hazel then learns that loving someone in her condition hurts so much and that it's OK because you love them.

Now I won't tell of the plot because it is such a beautiful story that you have to read it yourself. Anyway here is what I thought about it:

John Green does not just tells us of a love in times of trouble or loving someone who you knew will be gone but the beautiful moments that you share with your love ones is most important. As said in the book, " You gave me a forever in a number of days and I'm grateful." 

I would also like to commend John Green on his detailed telling of how painful and terrible it is to be dealing with cancer. Sure, other authors would tell of stories of survival and how they battled cancer  through numerous chemotherapy sessions and medicine and surgeries but what he did was showed how cancer is in the eyes of a patient, a dying one at that.  He showed how a patient feels when she sees her parents crying and preparing themselves to say goodbye. It's like being a grenade. That once you go off, you hurt everyone around you. Most cancer stories tells us how painful it is to lose someone from the disease but John Green tells us how it is equally painful to be the grenade. 

I would now like to talk about Augustus Waters which is a character from the book. Normally, when I do book reviews, and when I talk about characters, I talk about all (important) characters. But I would like to talk about this particular character. Augustus' story is not different from other stories of boyfriends with girlfriends who are sick. We've all heard of that but what is special about him is that he knows how much it hurts to love someone that you know is not there forever but it's OK for him because he loves his grenade more than anything else.

This book is highly recommended for everyone. I would like to thank my friend and former office mate Angela Dalao for recommending this book and she was right in saying that it was a tearjerker. 

Happy reading!!