TFIOS: A Book Review

I've been drafting this in my head for some time, trying to figure out the best way to explain why I feel like this book is amazing. I meant to publish it before the movie, but maybe all the people who ugly cried with me will understand more what I'm trying to say.

 

TFIOS is a best selling novel that was so popular it became a movie.

 

This is because it made the readers feel. The readers grew attached to the characters through the amazing way that John Green developed them. You felt their struggles and their angst. Now this happens with a lot of books, but there was something more impactful about this one.

 

As the readers fell in love, the characters began to live harder and harder lives. Trial after trial kept slamming them and, as you do when you are in love, you feel like you are struggling along with them.

 

Feeling is such an amazing thing. Something that a lot of people are devoid of. They aren't necessarily sad, but they aren't happy. They are stuck in this state of nothingness and there isn't really a way to escape. Until you read something packed with so much feeling that it hurts. Because feeling like your soul has been ripped out of your body is better than feeling nothing at all because when you hurt, you know you're still alive and there is a purpose because it is possible to live with pain, but it becomes unbearable to live with nothing inside.

 

There is definitely an argument that it isn't the best written book in the whole world and I'm not saying that it is. I am saying that TFIOS made me feel something and that feeling adds a deeper meaning of what it means to be human. I believe that we are all made up of layers and the deeper those layers go the more we understand and the more capable we are of greatness because of that understanding.  I also believe that there are some things that you can't quite experience on your own and that is why books are written. Books are here to dig into our humanity a little deeper. TFIOS made me understand the pain of cancer, not only for the one who has it, but also for the frazzled parents of the child who don't know what to do or how to keep their child alive as long as they can. It taught me more about love than I've ever before known. And it taught me more about being a good person.

 

I also think the underlying messages were key to this whole thing. The messages being:

YOU ARE NOT YOUR DISEASE

JUST BECAUSE YOU DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM THOSE YOU LOVE DOES NOT MEAN THEY LOVE YOU ANY LESS

YOUR PARENTS LOVE YOU MOST

and the list goes on and on.

 

These are all things people need to hear and need to understand because living in a world buffered off from these realities does no one justice and robs you of layers deeper than your skin.

 

This book also spoke the fears everyone is too afraid to think about. The fear of oblivion, of dying, of not being loved, of being a source of sadness in the life of those you love, of not being remembered. Augustus' fear of dying without leaving anything behind to mark that he was here on this earth, that he lived and loved and did something worth talking about, hits me on a whole other level. I am terrified of this as well, but TFIOS said that you may not be loved widely but you can be loved deeply. But the point is also made that there are countless lives that you affect that you are not aware of.

 

I am a good person but a s***** writer. So I hope I kind of conveyed to you what I tried to. I know this is just fiction, but its important to me.