Place Your Heart in a Ringer: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Overall Rating:  5 stars

Addiction Level:  I read it every waking moment.

Believe-ability:  The setting is believable.

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Life is not fair; it never has been.  It never will be.  But life is what you make of it.  It is what you do with it.

The Fault in Our Stars is about Hazel who has cancer.  She will never be cured; her life will just be prolonged.  Her life changes when she meets Gus, a cancer survivor.  Gus is full of life and reenergizes Hazel.

Hazel’s favorite book is An Imperial Affliction, and Gus comes to love it too.  The book’s only flaw is it ends in mid-sentences.  Who would end a book like that?  Together Gus and Hazel seek out the author to discover the real ending.

What I loved:

·         John Green does not sugar coat long-term suffering.  His details are sometimes too overwhelming.

·         Long-term suffering and friends.  Green pegged people’s reactions to illness.  Most people disappear; most people cannot handle being the friend of a “sick person.”  Those that matter stick with you to the end.

·         The caregiver.  When people think about terminal very rarely do they think of the caregiver.  Is their whole life taking care of the ill, or is it something more?  Will they have a life after the ill is better/gone?

·         Gus.  He is a hilarious character full of life.  I can picture him driving in an abrupt stop-and-go manner with his prosthetic leg.

·         Van Houten.  He was a sad pathetic man.  Green does not sugar coat his pathetic state.  In fact I wavered between anger and pity.

·         Hazel.  I loved that she found life and the inner strength to go on. 

·         John Green’s accurate portrayal of characters.  I laughed.  I cried.  I lived through them.

·         Hope/support.  Though I long to be independent, I know that we cannot live life alone; we need each to survive.  I was happy that Hazel and Gus found each other to lean on.

What I questioned:

·         Eternal hope.  Though I partially depend on other people to help me through tough times, no one can replace my God.  The comfort and trust I have in Him is nothing to compared to human comfort.  “³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8: 38-39).