The Fault in Our Stars is an improbable story, but it doesn't feel like one when you're reading it. It feels exactly right.

 

Maybe it resonates so strongly because of my life as a sick child and then a sick adult who lost most of her sick friends in childhood. Our lives were more predictable because we didn't have cancer, which is unpredictable pretty much all the time, but we were still surprised sometimes. We loved each other and sometimes we fell in love and once in a while the person who died was the one who wasn't supposed to.

 

What I'm getting at is that it's really weird being a kid and having a mental list of which friends are supposed to die first. Green captures that feeling, all of those feelings, better than anyone I've read who wasn't somehow one of us. I was sure that he had lost a child or a sibling to cancer, right up the point in the acknowledgements where he says he didn't. It's that good.

 

So it's also that bad. I felt Hazel's pain and joy and fear so completely it was frightening, even as I was jealous of her strength. Hazel is a beautiful creature, as is Augustus, and their love is a privilege to witness. 

 

Bonus points to Green for making up a book for them to bond over rather than using an existing one and turning it into a half-assed lit class. That was a real stroke of genius and made their world all the more real for being wholly fictional.

I think I could have liked this more if there was a set up or better editing. I felt like I was walking in to he middle of a book, or like the first couple of chapters were missing. The narrator uses a lot of truncated sentences and I spend so much time trying to figure out who is who and who is talking that I'm removed from the story. I just never felt any connections to the story or characters, and Emma's actions didn't match up with my perceptions. Of course, there wasn't any set up for the characters so I went from thinking she was about 17 at first, to thinking she was 20, then finding out she was 25. Meh, it was weird, choppy, and not a writing style that I favor.

A good read, one that was better than the book before it, which was better than it's predecessor.  The characters in this series have become more real and more likeable, especially the main character, Olivia.

 

The mystery in this story was interesting, layered, and complex. Instead of a plot with a lot of suspects, this was a plot where there was no obviously viable suspect, making the unfolding of the story even more intriguing. The ending illuminated a motivation it was hard not to pity and be repulsed by at the same time.

 

A solid cozy mystery series I'd recommend to anyone looking for depth in their cozies - you'll not find humour or comedy in these books, but you will find well thought out plots and considered writing with complex characters.

(Got this book for review) 1.5 stars. i'm not sure how i'm gonna explain this book, how i feel about it, how i reacted to some scenes...it was just not my thing i guess? This is like 50 shades but in a more intense less equipment ready and more fantasy filled erotic novel. The beginning was really promising, you know, the kind of novel that was pretty "gripping" , you're going to be expecting that you'll finish it really fast, get hooked and just let a day pass you by , but it just didn't do it for me. Micah's character is THAT guy, that armani looking guy you'd be ready to drop to the floor and be naked for and Ella had a pretty great character profile on her too, but somehow, the lust, the love, the hate, and everything else in between just didn't feel genuine. It was all "we-looked-at-each-other-there-was-hunger-in-our-eyes-so-lets-just-get-our-freak-on" and then twilight-y fights and conflicts in between.Congratulations to the author though cause it seems that a lot of other readers loved the story, the author did a pretty good job of making something that will sell to a lot of people, it is just so unfortunate that I'm one of the people who weren't sold on this one.Their focus in the was a bit off too in my opinion but towards the end it did make sense.i'm not sure if i'm going to read the next book.