The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

First Line: "Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death."

Plot: "Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten." - Amazon

Comments: Just like many of my fellow readers had told me, this book was amazing. It's true. It's a totally candid look into the life of a terminal cancer patient, one who has barely begun her life only to see it ending already. 

By candid, I mean that Hazel and other teenagers with cancer are constantly commenting on how the general public views teenagers with cancer. They compare the stoic, always cheerful, heartbreakingly fight-to-the-end teenage cancer victim that is the popular story with the reality of being a cancer patient as a teen. They talk about "cancer perks", the things you get when people pity you for having cancer. They joke about death and cancer a lot. They're honest about how much it sucks to have cancer. This candidness is a huge part of what makes The Fault in Our Stars such an amazing book - it's a refreshing, much-needed break from the glorification of cancer battles. 

However, the same candidness is also part of what makes this book so difficult to read. It's a really tough read because it's so honest. It's hard to hear about the truths of living with cancer, of losing your limbs, of watching your friends die. The Fault in Our Stars does not pull its emotional punches. 

I love the characters for their conversations (though their dialogue often seems far too unbelievable for its wit and thoughtfulness) and for their honesty. Hazel is funny and easy to love. Augustus is not who you think he is, at first. All the characters surprise you. 

Though I do not regret reading this book and I absolutely recommend it, I must admit that The Fault in Our Stars did not leave me feeling happy or satisfied. To best understand my reaction to this book, read the open letter I wrote to John Green, the author, in the form of a poem: A Letter to John Green. There are references to the book but nothing I would call a spoiler. I wrote this poem immediately after finishing the book and it describes my feelings towards the story much better than I can here. 

Rating: I rate The Fault in Our Stars a ten out of ten. 

Pure by Julianna Baggott

Book one of the Pure Trilogy.

First Line: "Pressia is lying in the cabinet."

Plot: Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the lucky escaped the disaster within their high-technology, protective Dome while the unlucky survived but remain on the outside in the desolation of the aftermath. Outsider Pressia knows how to make it in the world where you can't trust anyone, the world where everyone has some disability marking their status as an unlucky survivor. She lives with the sinister silence of the Dome mocking her. Insider Partridge, on the other hand, knows nothing about the outside world but wants to. Their choices lead them to uncover truths about their pasts and what the world has come to.

Comments: The story in Pure by Julianna Baggott is about fairness and discovering who you are. The characters fight to survive in a world where everyone is their enemy, surrounded by inequality and unfair circumstances. The story relates to my life because throughout the story the characters are learning about themselves – what they’re willing to do for the greater good or the ones they love and what they aren’t willing to do – something everyone goes through. People are sometimes surprised by their own actions. I can see this in the story.

Pure shows a sharp contrast between the lives of the people outside the Dome and lives of the people inside. Outside is desolation and ruin, warped and twisted bodies, and an atmosphere of constant fear and kill-or-be-killed. Inside is organization and cleanliness, impossibly perfect and healthy bodies, and ignorance – and where there is not ignorance, there is a sense of superiority. This clear divide between social levels is inaccurate in depicting the real world. It’s true that there are different groups within the two classes: militia members and citizens outside, students and super-soldiers inside. But even so, I disagree with the simplified idea of good and bad, black and white, and right and wrong. Characters Lyda and Partridge are examples of the gray that is so present in real society because they come from the privileged and sinister Dome but care about what’d going on outside. It’s possible that the sharp contrasts in this story were exaggerated purposefully for simplicity, but it doesn’t make sense to me that anything can be so decisively divided when it comes to humans.

The story was heavy on the ideas of family, the bonds between family members, and finding out where you come from and how that affects who you are. But I think there was too much emphasize on this. The idea of family was romanticized in this story in a way that made it feel unrealistic. Main character Pressia and Partridge shared some kind of bond because they shared the same mother, while in reality being related to someone means absolutely nothing beyond genetics and legalities. Neither really knew their mother but both were obsessed with the idea of finding her. This is more easily understandable, but the strength of their bond with her seemed incongruent with how much they actually knew about her. The story didn’t match up with my views on family.

I did like that the story casually included characters of different races. By this I mean that some characters were not white (Pressia was Japanese) but their non-Caucasian backgrounds were not stressed dramatically. Race wasn’t a big deal in the story but different races were present. That’s important in today’s society because characters should represent all different nationalities but shouldn’t necessarily make a big deal of the fact that they’re different.

Pressia felt like a recycled character in this story. I do appreciate the strong female lead, but she felt like a mix of Katniss Everdeen and a handful of other fantasy female teenagers. Strong, yes – brazenly so, always ready to prove her merit and toughness. Stubborn, willful, and not willing to open up initially. But as the story goes on, she softens and starts becoming protective of other people and the readers can see that she’s just a really cool person over all. Pressia seemed modeled after what’s becoming a generic “strong” female lead and I didn’t care for her because she didn’t feel like her own person.

The story left many questions unanswered. For one, the big picture of the dystopian world was never explained. The plot only covered a small area, so what about the rest of the world? It’s true that in the post apocalyptic world, communication between cities would be nearly nonexistent. However, the characters don’t seem to think much beyond their own little worlds. Nothing much was said about the organization in the Dome either – I got the sense that it was supposed to be much bigger than what we actually saw from Partridge’s perspective.

Overall, the story was confusing. I felt many details were unclear, like the situation with the militia being different from whomever the Dome sends out. I was never sure who was affiliated with whom or what was really going on. Maybe this was meant to show the uncertainty of the characters’ world, but regardless it made the story hard to follow. In addition, the ending felt predictable and forced. I am not at all interested in reading the sequels to this book because I didn't enjoy any of the characters and the ending was disappointingly predictable.

Rating: I rate Pure a six out of ten. 

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

First Line: "So in order to understand everything that happened, you have to start from the premise that high school sucks."

Plot: Greg Gaines is a chubby, awkward teenager who has perfected the delicate art of being friends with everyone and no one at the same time. He spends his time making mediocre films with the cussing, perpetually angry teen Earl. Things are okay. But then Greg's mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer and his life begins to fall apart.

Comments: I skimmed over a lot of the text. There seemed to be descriptions and sections that lasted too long and I would skip to the next part. What I did read was vaguely entertaining but not dramatically so. The book definitely felt like it was written by a teenager who doesn't know how to write.

I didn't ever connect much with any of the characters. They were all so very flawed that liking them was difficult. Their situations were easier to relate to, perhaps. But the people in the story felt like characters as opposed to real people.

The idea of the book is great. It's not some inspiring, heroic tale of cancer-fighting teenagers who support each other and fix everything. It's about an overweight, awkward, antisocial guy who finds himself stuck with trying to be a good friend to a girl dying of cancer. The story is different and feels real because of the flawed characters and the awkward dialogue.

However, it's a little boring. Because it's a pretty realistic story, nothing exciting really happens and the characters don't do things that make you feel happy inside. This is partly why I kept skimming. I was waiting for something exciting to happen but it never really did.

Nothing was resolved in the end, but in this case it seemed fitting. It made sense because experiences like this in real life don't resolve smoothly and happily and with a clear lesson learned. So while the book ends without a satisfying conclusion, it ends realistically, which is satisfying by itself since so many books have ridiculous fairytale endings.

Rating: I rate Me and Earl and the Dying Girl a six out of ten.