Hazel Grace has cancer and it sucks. The fact that she is only sixteen makes it suck even more. But when Hazel meets cute, charming Augustus in her cancer support group, her life starts to suck a little less. 
 On the surface, we have a bunch of witty kids dealing with some crappy circumstances and they're expected to be "tough" and "fighters." And they're not, because they're a bunch of moody teenagers and they have cancer on top of it. They deal with it the best they can--reading great books, playing video games, joking about death--or they don't deal with it at all, which happens more often. 
 Now, I have a confession and you have my permission to hate me forever: I've read all these reviews about this book being so emotional and people started crying at page two, but I didn't cry at all. Maybe because I didn't connect to the characters (I don't care how smart you are, teenagers don't talk like that; I don't talk like that) or because cancer itself has become this thing everyone has and everyone writes about. 
 The cancer story isn't new, it isn't original. But even if I couldn't connect to the characters, I still found them charming. I liked Hazel. She wasn't brave or anything, she just was. 
 And I won't deny loving Augustus. He's the best friend, the boy you can't help but love, the boy who isn't afraid to tell you everything sucks and will go on an angry rampage with you, even if it's not his anger. This book wouldn't be the same without Augustus. It wouldn't be a story worth telling.