Genre: 4 stars
Review: I wasn't sure initially whether or not to review this book since I was scared I would be biased towards anything written or created by John Green. However, after a couple of days of thinking about this story, I thought that I should. Even if it would never help anyone else decide if the book is worthy of all the hype, then at least I would have expressed out loud how I feel about it.
First off, the writing itself I thought was brilliant. As expected, it was as engaging as any John Green novel. It was smart, witty, and funny despite having a rather depressing premise. He was able to capture and paint the lives of these teenagers with cancer, and he did this in such a realistic way it can sometimes be incredibly hard to read about. It was honest, surprising, as well as heartbreaking all at the same time. It flowed perfectly, and is such a page-turner I literally had to force myself every night to stop reading it and go to bed.
However, as you can see I didn't give it a 5-star rating. I just felt like there were some flaws that kept me from it being a favorite of mine. One of the characters in the book, without spoiling anything, was too poorly developed. That said character simply seemed like a plot device - and a very flat, cliche, and stereotypical one at that. I also thought that some of the dialogues exchanged between certain characters were too forced. I get that these characters are supposed to be smarter than your average teenagers, but seriously... nobody uses extremely difficult vocabulary words during a normal, regular conversation.
Despite these two points though, I still LOVED this book. It was just everything I expected it to be. It felt authentic as it was well-written and wonderfully narrated. It was heartbreakingly realistic yet strangely uplifting. I highly recommend this to contemporary readers and fans of John Green. It won't disappoint.
