Hazel and Augustus become good friends over time and it's clear from very early on that the two are falling in love with each other but Hazel doesn't wish to get close to anyone because she see herself as a grenade just waiting to go off with her death causing everyone she's close to pain once she's gone. Augustus doesn't share Hazel viewpoint on this matter and instead feels that the fact someone could die soon just means they should not waste their time denying what they feel. One of the things that Hazel and Augustus bond over is Hazel's favorite book An Imperial Affliction which was about a teenage girl with cancer and it ends mid-sentence which makes them both curious about what happens to the main characters loved ones after the book ends. Due their curiosity and that Peter Van Houten's the author of An Imperial Affliction, promise to reveal what happens after the end of the book if they came to Amsterdam to see him in person, Augustus uses his wish from the Genies for Hazel and Augustus to go to Amsterdam. Peter Van Houten ends up being a disappointment and doesn't give them the answers they wanted but they still ended up having a good time on their trip and this is actually when they end up getting together.
Towards the end of the book Augustus's cancer comes back worse than ever and well it's pretty obvious what ends up happening which ended up making me cry a whole bunch. The book was overall great it had this dark sense of humor and was very heartfelt at the same time. I loved the characters of Hazel and Augustus and the brief relationship they shared. Please tell me your thoughts on this book.
I agree with everything in this review. But also, I wanted to add (since it was difficult for me to even write a review after reading this - none of my sentences were coherent enough) that what I found really interesting about this book was Hazel's love of An Imperial Affliction, to the extent that she'd attempted to contact the author several times for the ending, wanting to know what happened before she died. (And the measures Augustus took to make that happen.) Because I wondered if this was something John Green had seen with real people he knew that inspired this aspect of the plot/character, or something he invented from his head... Or if it was based on what happened with Natalie McDonald and JK Rowling, since that was the story that kept going through my head as I was reading the book. (When JK Rowling was writing Harry Potter, somewhere in the middle of the series, when there were still many books to go, a girl with leukemia wrote to her asking her if she could tell her anything about how Harry's story was meant to end because she was dying and she didn't want to die without knowing what happened. She loved the books that much. When JKR read the letter, she contacted Natalie's family immediately, wanting to talk to her on the phone because she didn't know how much more time she had, but by then, Natalie had already passed away. So she told the story to Natalie's parents and she stayed in contact with them, and when the next book was written, one of the newest first years to enter Gryffindor was named Natalie McDonald. I mean, obviously JKR is a better person than Van Houten. But Hazel's desire to know the end of the story reminded me of Natalie's, so I couldn't help but make these connections when I read TFIOS.)
ReplyDeleteAgh, sorry for rambling, but I'm so glad you enjoyed it!