The Fault In Our Stars (Audio)

Title: The Fault in Our Stars
Author: John Green
Pub: 2012; Penguin
Pages: 318
Audio Length: 7 hours
Narrator: Kate Rudd
Genre: Young Adult, Death & Dying

Okay, let’s just get this out right away because it’s surely not a spoiler but TOTALLY relevant to the ahmazingness of this book. 

The kids in The Fault in Our Stars have Cancer.  All of them.  They all meet in a survivor’s support group, but it’s one of those survivor groups where some are surviving with Cancer.  Like Hazel.  She’s this cool kid who lugs around an oxygen tank because she was diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer and there were tumors in your lungs but some miracle treatment shrunk them and things look better even though she feels like she’s a walking grenade because her life expectancy is so short.

Needless to say Hazel does not like to get close to people.  Why bother. She’s got one foot in the door of death.  She’s perfectly content reading her books and watching ANTM (um, America’s Next Top Model, who are you people who don’t know that?!?).  BUT, her parents, being good parents that they are encourage her to go to the before mentioned support group.  And that’s when her life gets a bit messy. 

Hazel meets Augustus.  Intelligent, witty, in-remission, Augustus.  (He sticks cigarettes in his mouth but doesn’t light them, you know for the POWER of it; love this kid!).   Hazel is in this thing where she can’t stay away from Augustus but also doesn’t want him to get uber close because well - she’s gonna die, and his cancer has an 80% survivor rate.  Augustus is fierce and pretty much tells her she’s crazy, he wants to be around her.

Oh and then, to make this an even MORE beautiful book than what it already is, there’s a book that Hazel ADORES and gives to Augustus to read and he GETS IT too (readers, how important is this? We all have those books that we wish the world would get).  Aaand, Hazel has questions about the end because like life there’s not really an end and there’s characters that go on without a story because theirs story was the one being told.  So, Hazel and Augustus go on this mission to find out what happens to the other people.  Really?  How amazing is that?  How many times have you wondered what happens to the people in your books, you know?  Blows my mind at the adventure and romanticism.

This book reminds me (as always) of the brilliance that is John Green.

The Audio Version

I don't consider myself much of a book cryer you know?  I don't know why, and maybe it's more to do with the fact that most books I read probably aren't all that sad, but I don't tear up...MUCH LESS get a full fledged stream of tears.

I owe part of that with this book because of the narrator.  Her inflections were right on. Her voice was right on.  The separation of the characters - AMAZING.  Much like Khrystine Hvam, after I finished listening to THIS audio, I began looking for other audios that Kate Rudd has done.  (I'm thinking maybe Holly Black's Tithe trilogy?)

Oh and #winning there's even a Q&A with John Green at the end.