“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” So says Hazel Lancaster, protagonist of The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green. Like so many other readers of the #1 New York Times bestseller, I have fallen victim to that “weird evangelical zeal”.

Cancer Kid Support Group is nothing but misery for sixteen year old lung cancer patient Hazel, until she meets Augustus Waters. Their lives, friendship, and love take the reader from Indianapolis to Amsterdam with pit stops at every possible emotion along the way. Though far from a cloying tearjerker, this book will leave you wracked with sobs, hardly able to see but squinting through your tears because it is imperative that you find out what happens next.

Tears don’t drown the story, however. Hilariously funny insights and comments pepper even the heartrending moments. It’s possible that the laughing-to-crying ratio is 1:1, and seeing you read this book is sure to make your family and friends worry for your emotional stability. Those who have a weakness for fictional characters, beware Augustus Waters. The Fault In Our Stars is romantic without ever being romanticized.

Even after you have cried yourself out over the events of the book, you might find yourself shedding a tear over the fact that Hazel and Augustus are not real. Green creates characters who are witty, thoughtful, and smart but whom are still irreparably flawed, realistically human teenagers. Never does their disease beautify or exalt them and never does their intelligence veer towards being sanctimonious or pretentious.

Whether or not The Fault In Our Stars can “put the shattered world back together”, it has the power to shatter and put back together everyone who reads it.