Fifty years ago, when I was around the target age for books like [a:John Green|1406384|John Green|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1353452301p2/1406384.jpg]'s [b:The Fault in Our Stars|11870085|The Fault in Our Stars|John Green|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632632557l/11870085.SX50.jpg|16827462], such books were awful things designed mostly to warn young readers about the evils of drugs. I've had no interest in reading young adult fiction but this book is an exception for two reasons. First, the author and I went to the same college. He graduated nineteen years after I did, but it was one of those small Ohio colleges that makes you feel a mild connection to anyone who went there. Second, the second main character, Augustus, has the same form of cancer that I do. He even had the same leg amputated though in his case it was when he was a child; mine was when I was in my late fifties.
 Writing about terminally ill teenagers is not a new idea. [a:John Gunther|68809|John Gunther|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1235985796p2/68809.jpg]'s [b:Death Be Not Proud|486298|Death Be Not Proud|John Gunther|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440036906l/486298.SY75.jpg|1321803] was published in 1949. In the 1970s, terminally ill young people became a staple of made-for-TV movies following the great success of [a:Erich Segal|15516|Erich Segal|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1202419115p2/15516.jpg]'s hugely successful [b:Love Story|73968|Love Story (Love Story, #1)|Erich Segal|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388812297l/73968.SY75.jpg|816372] and the movie it was based on. (Both came out in 1970.)
 Fault is a good book and even old sourpusses like me, more prone to think teenagers are no good than to sympathize with them, found the narrator, 16-year-old Hazel, a likeable and sympathetic character. There are a few choices I'd have advised Green against, like using all caps as often as Hazel does and, especially, descriptions of video game playing of any length, which dates a book fast for the young and alienates the old, but those are minor drawbacks overall. I would've avoided bringing Christianity into it as specifically as Green does as a means of broadening its appeal and its message, but Green is a Red Stater. The writing is simple enough that I, a very slow reader, breezed through it in three days, but it's not dumbed down. The characters make literary references any parent would be proud to see their kids get.
 If you find The Fault in Our Stars on you kid's shelf, reading it would be a good way to spend a few hours.
Excerpt:

 I woke up in the ICU. I could tell I was in the ICU because I didn't have my own room, and because there was so much beeping, and because I was alone: They don't let your family stay with you 24/7 in the ICU at Children's because it's an infection risk. There was wailing down the hall. Somebody's kid had died. I was alone. I hit the red call button.
 A nurse came in seconds later. "Hi," I said.
 "Hello, Hazel. I'm Alison, your nurse," she said.
 "Hi, Alison, My Nurse," I said.
 Whereupon, I started to feel pretty tired again. But I woke up a bit when my parents came in, crying and kissing my face repeatedly, and I reached up for them and tried to squeeze, by my everything hurt when I squeezed, and Mom and Dad told me that I did not have a brain tumor, but that my headache was caused by poor oxygenation, which was caused by my lungs swimming in fluid, a liter and a half (!!!!) of which had been successfully drained from my chest, which was why I might feel a slight discomfort in my side, where there was, hey look at that, a tube that went from my chest into a plastic bladder half full of liquid that for all the world resembled my dad's favorite ale.