Author Review | John Green
I know I’m going to have an unpopular opinion here. I am not a fan. John Green has published 5 (solo) novels and I have read three of them.
The first was The Fault in Our Stars which I think is totally overrated. Not that it was badly written or anything but the hype around it is super inflated. I also have some personal reasons for not liking the story - I've lost multiple loved ones to cancer - and I hate how cancer it glorified in this book. I don't think it was at all his intention (and I don't blame him for the response to it) but I got really tired of people saying that this book was the saddest thing they've ever 'experienced'....okay, I'm glad that you've never experience worse, but try dealing with this in real life. Understand that for some people this isn't just a story, it is a mirror of their reality. Also the whole "Okay? Okay" thing is really annoying.
The second book that I read was Paper Towns. It was recommended by a friend and I thought that it was a complete waste of time. I disliked most of the main characters and I felt like the entire plot was pointless. Literally, you get to the end and it’s like “so all of this happened for nothing…?”
The last one that I read was Looking for Alaska which I disliked so much that I DNF'd. I had a really hard time getting into the story and then when I did I still really had a problem with the way that the main character sexualizes Alaska. It’s disgusting. Not to mention the "huge turning point" in the story, after that I kind of stopped caring about everything else ya know? And then the ending (which I Googled) was kind of just like, “Oh okay. That’s it? Well, I guess that‘s cool then”
Overall I think his writing style is good, he writes amazingly interesting and fun characters (for the most part), but the plots are kind of dull and boring. I also am not a fan of using the r-word as someone who has siblings with mental illnesses, so that was a huge turn off and it happens often in his books.
When I was in elementary school, I was taught that the climax or turning point of the story is supposed to be something huge and then the story declines into a resolution. I can point out what’s supposed to be the climax in all of the stories but ironically I find all of them fairly anticlimactic, and there’s hardly any resolution. Especially for Paper Towns.
Every time I reach the end of one of his books I feel like the entire story was for nothing and in the end, the main character just ends up accepting something that they had no control over in the first place. I mean, I guess that’s a good lesson – to be able to accept that some things are just out of your control - but there’s hardly any difference between the three books that I've read.
I have heard good things about the most recent novel that he's published. Unfortunately, at this point, I have no intention of ever reading his work again.
If I had to rate in stars, I would give John Green a 2 out of 5.
