John Green's most famous novel has basically broken all records during the last four and a half years since its publication. On Goodreads, it is right now the book which has the second-highest number of reviews (only The Hunger Games has more), and it has jumped on position 6 of the books with the highest number of ratings. More than two years ago, the book had already sold more than ten million times, and even the movie adaption with Shaileene Woodley and Ansel Elgort has been generally well-received. And now you already have the reason for why the novel will not receive more than three stars from my side (tremendously hyped books always have some difficulties convincing me). I know, I know, I also rated Twilight with three stars. Let's say Twilight was on the lowest part of the three-star-range and Green's novel almost, almost made it to four. 
 So, now one of the last persons on Goodreads who hasn't read the book before can now finally confirm the successful conquest of the adventure of reading The Fault in Our Stars. I expected a sad undertone, a lot of tears and heartbreaking moments, a novel which will not succeed to make you smile even once. But oh, how it did. I smiled a lot, because John Green was able to capture the perfect mixture of sadness and happiness, mixed with elements of humor and romance. The aspect which sets this book apart from so many other Young Adult novels may very well be the fact that our protagonists' problems are so unlike the problems of typical characters in other YA books: Gus and Hazel don't have to fight against emotional entanglements, old-fashioned parents or jealous ex-partners. No, they have to fight against something way stronger and way more serious: death. 
 And that's where the beauty of the story begins to shine in all its splendor. Because Gus and Hazel don't just focus all their attention on fighting their cancer diagnosis and suffering from their fear of death; they begin to see life from other eyes, learn to appreciate their experience with everything they have. The cancer changed their lives, but as horrible as it is, it didn't destroy these teenagers. It is easy to see why The Fault in Our Stars has been so well-received after its initial release, and I have to admit that my expectations were completely wrong - and completely surpassed. 
 I will accept full responsibility for my rating which seems to undervalue this novel, but John Green's writing style simply never convinced me. At some moments it felt formulaic and cheesy, though I can forgive the latter because the romance aspect of the novel was still very likeable and convincing. However, I found it seriously hard to believe that Gus walked around like he had swallowed up a dictionary before entering Hazel's life. An entire dictionary. With a long section about metaphors in the appendix.