You know, I’ve seen several posts lately about John Green and I know I probably wrote about this right when I finished The Fault in Our Stars but I feel strongly enough about it to basically re-say it all again.  Which is that I was so terribly disappointed that the one book I owned signed by one of my favorite authors was thisbook.  It was good, it made me cry, it has quotes I’ll probably use at some point in my life when I want to dramatically illustrate the dramatics of a particularly dramatic situation, however it really was not up to par with Green’s other works.  In his other pieces--Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, etc—his intelligence and originality shines straight through.I didn’t find that in The Fault in Our Stars.  What I found was a failed attempt at injecting an old storyline with a fresh twist.  It’s the same kind of story Nicholas Sparks would write and that would feature Miley Cyrus in the movie version, just written better with some of that “hipster” spark—but not with enough to really make it “shine”.

After reading The Fault in Our Stars, I was surprised at my disappointment.  Then I realized that this is precisely what people are talking about when their heroes fail them, when their heroes betray them.  Because yes, as a John Green fan I feel betrayed.  I feel like he’s crossed over to the dark side.  He’s joined the Nicholas Sparks of the world.  And I love Nicholas Sparks as much as any other self-respecting person who really only likes A Walk to Remember out of all the novel-based movies that have his name on it, but none of that oozy-schmoozy-cuddlefest-jazz was why I loved John Green.