NOT what I expected. While the story COULD have been EPIC it was somehow dull due the WAY too philosophical view both main characters had it also felt ABSOLUTELY pointless.
Hazel and Augustus meet in a therapy group. Hazel is struggling with cancer, she knows she isn't going to make it but the treatment she is getting now somehow prolongs the ending giving her a bit more time (while don't really knowing what "a bit" means). She is sick, has to have oxygen tank with her at all times and she is quite detached from the lives around her (almost) except for her parents. Meeting Augustus and becoming fast friends is NOT what she was expecting. Yet it happens nevertheless.
I enjoyed this book but can't say it was a favorite. While it started off GREAT, had a lot of Laugh Out Load moments and loved the fact that the story was told from the point of view of one teenage guy - Miles Halter who wasn't popular, having no friends who decided to look for the "Great Perhaps" in a boarding school in Alabama called "Culver Creek". A lot happens to Miles in this year, things he would probably never forget and which probably shaped the grown man he became. But, alas, we only meet him and his new friends for a year.
I usually dislike teenage books with a passion! I just can't be bothered with the nonsense they keep thinking and god help us - saying! But this book was as far off than the usual teenage book as one could get. Firstly, since it's not really a romance book in the clear sense of the word, and it's more of a "coming of age" book, there is a lot of meaning to what happens to Miles and his friends and mostly to the way he and the people around him interpret those events. It made the story more real but also more meaningful, yet at the same time, it's the reason I'm giving this one 4 stars instead of 5. It got tedious on a certain point where I felt this book is becoming a "psycho-bubble" a bit too much for me. Also while the first half of the book was fun and enjoyable the other half which was suppose to be more "meaningful" lacked in "action", mostly I mean that it felt as nothing was happening, they were all somehow waiting for something to happen or to be revealed. Even though they were actively doing things it dragged in my opinion.
