Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.
Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.
Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.
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First line:
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over again, ate infrequently, and spent quite a bit of my abundant free time thinking about death.-------------------
I fell in love with this book. The rawness of it was amazing. It didn't try to sanctify cancer patients, but showed them as real people who are still human, and therefore have human emotions. Most people want to put cancer patients on a pedastol and that they were these amazing people who were smiling and joking until the end. Hazel and Augustus's kept things lively even when I wanted to cry.
Not only did I enjoy the two main characters, but I loved Isaac and Peter van Houten. Each character had depth and I loved it. This will be a book I read again and again.
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