Our thanks to Guest Blogger Heather for this post.
If you haven’t, TFIOS is about a teenage girl named Hazel Lancaster who meets Augustus Waters, the love of her life, and has her whole life turned upside down. Oh, and she’s suffering from terminal cancer. While this is a self-described YA book, it is so well written and richly detailed that a person of any age could enjoy it. It has a little taste of My Sister’s Keeper, while still managing to tell a totally unique story about illness, grief, and living life anyway. Here’s the movie trailer to give you a better idea:
“Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life – dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge – he follows. After their all‑nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues – and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.” publisher
I would recommend picking up this one first, as it’s John’s next novel in line to become a feature film. It’s being brought to us by the same people who made the TFIOS movie
“Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words – and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed‑up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.” publisher
“When it comes to relationships, everyone has a type. Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. He has dated – and been dumped by – 19 Katherines. In the wake of The K‑19 Debacle, Colin – an anagram‑obsessed washed‑up child prodigy – heads out on a road trip with his overweight, Judge Judy‑loving friend Hassan. With 10,000 dollars in his pocket and a feral hog on his trail, Colin is on a mission to prove a mathematical theorem he hopes will predict the future of any relationship (and conceivably win the girl).” publisher
“One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens – both named Will Grayson – are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns‑of‑heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both them legions of faithful fans.” publisher
If you get through all of these novels and are STILL looking for more John Green, did you know that he and his brother run a pretty popular YouTube channel called the Vlogbrothers? They started it in 2008 as a project called Brotherhood 2.0, where they attempted to go a full year with no textual contact, making video blogs for each other every day instead. This quickly took off and over the last six years has evolved into something quite different, gaining a mass following of teens and adults alike, who call themselves the Nerdfighters. It’s rife with book suggestions, videos explaining complex world issues, silly songs about a wide range of nerdy topics, updates on the brothers’ lives, and really a whole lot more. You can watch the entire process of The Fault In Our Stars, from the early stages of John writing the novel to a pretty detailed account of what the production of the movie was like (really interesting to see this through the author’s eyes). Definitely worth checking out!