Hazel is a 16-year-old cancer patient. She's too sick to be in school. Her best friends are her mother and father. She's accepted this as her life, in many ways she's already dead. She will never get better, she's in a stasis of not getting worse.
Her mother forces her out into society in the form of a support group for cancer patients. One day a new boy shows up, he's incredibly handsome and as weird as she is, they immediately become friends. This is a story of how they fall in love. But, trite as it may be, it's much more than that. Green's writing is smart and funny. He is able to wound you or heal you with a sentence.
I am writing this with a gapping would in my heart. I've purposely not read this book for a while, knowing that it would hurt to read, but I'm glad that I did. Green has been faulted with the narrator not having an authentic teenager voice, regardless of whether or not you agree, it takes nothing away from this story. This is worth the read and the inevitable pain of finishing this book.
Favorite quote: I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
