Waiting for My Hold: Revisiting The Fault in Our Stars
Written By Stephanie Hampton
Young Adult Librarian
It was 2014. Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize. Solange, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z walked into an elevator at the Met Gala. Disney’s Frozen dominated popular culture. It was spring, and the allure of summer vacation was battling with the stress of upcoming final exams.
And I was waiting diligently for an email from the Hamilton Township Public Library telling me that my hold was ready.This book was everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean everywhere—in the hands of my peers in school hallways, quotes plastered across binders, and referenced endlessly on long-forgotten Tumblr blogs (the real power player of the era). With the film adaptation set to release that summer, I knew I wasn’t the only person waiting for my turn. There was always the risk that it would be corny, overhyped, or simply not worth the anticipation. But as a voracious reader, I had to find out for myself.
John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars.
I cannot stress enough how much you have to remember the stakes for book lovers at the time, and much of that has to do with The Hunger Games (and yes, Twilight too, but we’re focusing on The Hunger Games).
Released in 2012, the film adaptation became both a commercial and critical success, launching the mainstream careers of then-rising actors Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth. It may be difficult to imagine now, but the benchmark for youth-oriented adaptations was still the Harry Potter franchise—a phenomenon written for a generation of children who grew up alongside its characters.
The Hunger Games was different. It was Young Adult, not juvenile. Its success showed Hollywood that teen audiences wanted more than stories about first kisses and prom dates. Dystopian, political, and socially conscious fiction was connecting with readers who were becoming independent consumers and passionate fans. I still remember spending evenings on the phone with friends, coordinating movie trips, and pooling together money we had saved for tickets.
This became the era of The Maze Runner, Divergent, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and countless others. An avalanche of adaptations arrived, each hoping to become the next Hunger Games. Some succeeded. Some failed. Others started strong before fading into disappointment.
And while The Fault in Our Stars was already critically acclaimed, there was no guarantee its film adaptation would be. It could have easily become another cash grab.
What made The Fault in Our Stars stand apart was that it wasn’t set in a dystopian future or an alternate universe. It was set in a very ordinary 2012 Indianapolis.
Yet its subject matter was anything but ordinary.
The novel approached death, illness, and grief with a level of honesty that felt refreshing and necessary. There was no evil wizard, magical curse, or fictional plague to blame. Hazel was simply living with one of the cruelest realities life can offer. That truth is what made the book so beautiful—and what made the love story between Hazel and Augustus so unforgettable.
For much of the novel, we assume Augustus is the one who has escaped tragedy. Hazel, after all, is the one we expect to lose.
But life doesn’t follow our expectations.
Hazel did nothing wrong. Augustus did nothing wrong. The book quietly asks us to consider a difficult reality: sometimes death and disease are not consequences of our choices. Sometimes they are simply beyond our control. You can follow every rule, work harder than everyone else, and still lose.
“But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”
We haven’t even finished the first page before Hazel acknowledges that she will die. At seventeen years old, she presents herself as someone who has accepted that reality. Yet as the story unfolds, we see the weight she carries beneath that acceptance. Augustus helps her confront those fears and navigate the grief she has already begun to experience.
One of Hazel’s greatest concerns isn’t her own death—it’s the pain she knows it will cause her parents. She worries about grief she will never witness, carrying guilt for events she cannot control and will never see unfold. Haven’t we all done that? As teenagers, as adults, haven’t we all spent time worrying about futures we cannot predict?
After finally reading the book—just in time for the film’s June 2014 release—I hoped the adaptation would do the novel justice. I hoped everyone involved understood that the losses that mattered on the page also had to matter on screen.
It sounds morbid, but we cannot rewrite every ending.
Ultimately, The Fault in Our Stars isn’t about who we lose. It’s about how we move forward after loss. It’s about the people who shape us, whose influence remains long after they’re gone. As long as we carry their memories with us, they are never truly forgotten.
(Coco fans know exactly what I mean.)
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