Whenever I read John Green I become this big blob of hormones. I cry, I laugh, I'm completely jealous of his characters and his abilities as a writer, I want to scream, and I can't put the book down until I'm finished. It's a complete overload of feeling. I love his books, but I can't read them too close together because his characters feel like the same people from book to book. The plots change, and I am still totally sucked in, but the characters all seem the same: angsty, overly vocabulary-capable (if that makes sense), too smart for their own good teenagers.
But the parents in The Fault in Our Stars, oh the parents. I loved them. They weren't nonexistent, they weren't distant and silly, they were there. Does anybody else find that annoying in young adult books? Parents are a big part of kids lives, even if they are distant and irresponsible. They still have huge impact.
The way he dealt with cancer was just, wow. I could not have done that. It was raw. But not awkward. And getting to see how a cancer kid treats another cancer kid while commiserating together over the way people without cancer react. It was simply well done.
I highly recommend this book (and John Green's other stuff) to anyone wanting to get into the young adult market who hasn't before. I always give my copy of Looking for Alaska to young adult newbies.
