First of all, spoilers.
I am in such deep, fantastical, heartbreaking love with Looking for Alaska. I've never fallen so hard for a book. I was sixteen when I first read it. It was a case of right book, right time. There is no better period in my life that I could have fallen for something.
I read Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson and An Abundance of Katherines and never fell as hard. I still carry a lot of admiration for Margo Roth Spiegelman who I'd like to revisit as a feminist and explore just exactly how much of a female enigma she really is.
Two months ago I found the time to really get my teeth into The Fault in Our Stars. I devoured it in two sittings over the course of 48 hours.
It's hard to objectively analyse a text once you're aware of its reputation and enamoured with the author's previous work. It's hard not to let your expectations get in the way of your reading.
With those ideas in mind: my overwhelming feeling is one of disappointment.
It felt like a carbon copy of LfA.
The protagonist is a loner struggling with the social interaction required of teenagers. A character dies (arguably unexpectedly) midway through the narrative. It ends on a letter.
I felt like the parallels are too much. Is this some kind of teen fiction formula? Is it Nicholas Sparks for 11-19 year olds? I just couldn't buy it.
The "okay" thing was cheesy and forced and I didn't like Augustus. I can't make up my mind if he's genuinely supposed to be this strange asshole or actually doesn't work as a character. I liked Alaska. She's destructive but she's so human. Augustus has this dumbass "metaphor" which has been ripped the shit out of by memes across the internet. Either proving its impressive transcendence or that thousands of teenagers didn't feel "okay" about it.
If the selling point of this new work of Green's is a female protagonist then count me out. Making a protagonist female just to sell more books is counterproductive to feminism. Females are not there to sell your novels. I can fit myself into any protagonist. Man, woman, time travelling gender altering Orlando, if a text is written by a human about humans there will be a kind of human connection. The sex of the protagonist does not necessarily determine my desire to read the narrative.
Ultimately, LfA is the better version of this text; why would I want a slightly less believable copy?
And, nothing pissed me off more than the fact that it didn't end in the middle of a
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