Reading this, I'm not surprised it turned out to be the juggernaut that it is. It's compulsively readable, and the biggest strength is Green's tone, which is absolutely unsentimental and often morbidly funny. Given that the story's told in first person, it really succeeds in making me feel for the protagonist. Hazel, young and terminal and painfully aware of the fact, is really a wonderful character. I enjoyed her so much, and I like how unflinchingly realistic the book is about her probable fate. There's no quick save coming, no tacked on happy ending, and her battle with cancer is going to end in one way only, and everybody knows it. Still, she's not one of those dying saintly types that comes up often in fiction of this type - she's angry and resentful and happy and hopeful all at once. She feels like a real person to me, in other words. Her love interest does not. Augustus is, well, I had a feeling early on he'd end up the way he did but it's not his fate that kept me from connecting with him. I just didn't find him believable as a character. Not remotely, and I don't really know why - except he seemed too polished, perhaps, and too consciously perfect. Like a very attractive mannequin with "tragic love interest" tattooed all over his face. The most adequate word I can think of to describe him is "plastic", and that, compared to Hazel's strong sense of reality, makes me far less interested in him and their relationship than I ever was in her.