I am generally disinterested in books having to do with cancer patients, after having read The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health, and normally pass them by. However, this book wasn't about cancer at all -- it was quite the contrary. If it were about cancer then I would have honed in on all of my problems with it, like the brief mentioning of diet not being able to help cancer even though it has now been proven that it can not only help most cancers but reverse and prevent them (see the above mentioned book). I would have honed in on those things but, again, the book wasn't about cancer. And the author, both in the author note and acknowledgements reminded the reader that this is pure fiction, it is made up. What it was about was the people. What wonderful characterization in this book, what wonderful characters. I read all of this praise about it and how "oh you're just going to cry reading it" kind of stuff. I finally picked up the book but, oh no, I wasn't going to cry. The last and only time I cried while reading a book was when I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As simple as this story was, because it was simple, John Green proves that you don't need event after event to have a lasting emotional impact on the reader. Well he got me. I got to those last couple of pages and there came the waterworks and it felt great. It reminded me how great it does feel to cry, to feel all levels of emotion. Thank you John Green for reminding me of the beauty of feeling.