by: John Greenpublished by: Dutton Books
publish date: January 2012
I've been thinking a lot about this book because so many people are so in love with it. There are a lot of people talking about what a remarkably profound book it is and how wonderful it is. I didn't really get that feeling from it. So, I've been wondering why I didn't feel that way about it. Much like Fifty Shades of Gray, I feel like this is a bandwagon book. It gets a lot of word of mouth talking up from non-readers, so it becomes this big thing. Then the "experienced readers" kind of sit around bewildered by the response because either they already knew about this thing and have been sitting on the bandwagon for ages or they know it's not really worth getting on the bandwagon because there are way better things out there. In terms of this book, I fall in the second category.
I'll say what I liked first. I expected it to be super sad all the time, like read it with a tissue box kind of sad. It wasn't really. There were some great bits of humor throughout the book. Parents were present in this YA book. Cancer/dying/illness wasn't glamorized in this book. It was hard and lingering and unpleasant. There was a realistic portraying. It wasn't romanticized.
I didn't like the way the characters interacted with each other. I didn't like the way they talked to each other. It was cute for the sake of the book, but it wasn't realistic. How many people talk to each other that way? Highly educated adults don't speak to each other that way, I doubt high school children are going to.
Anyway, that's my two bits about this book. What did you think?
R and I loved it. I don't feel it's a bandwagon book at all; I didn't know about it until I came across it as a freebie on my Kindle early last year; then R was assigned it for summer reading. I loved the wit, the way the kids tried so hard to be normal, oh, everything.
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