The start of this book has a lot of issues with how we as cancer patients perceive the struggles of other cancer patients. Green wrote that there's a competitiveness between us, that we're trying to beat each other to be in the bracket of survivors. That's not how it works. Those of us with cancer feel it as a group disaster when we enter hospitals and clinics. And like in any disaster, the survivors develop survivor's guilt. We don't think, as Green has put it, "I've just got to outlive these bastards." Later on Hazel becomes less harsh about these things, but that is not something that usually has to be slowly learned– we're human, we automatically empathize. There are some lines I liked despite the earlier quote offending me. Particularly one about having to handle things that are not handable, it's just that you have no choice.

Overall though, this is just another piece of media that uses cancer to make you sad. It's funny because the book criticizes art like that at the start and one of its lessons is about being more than your cancer and even if it takes over you completely it does not get a say in your legacy, yet all this book is is cancer. Which fine, but don't act like you're above other works.

My biggest gripe is that this reads very much from a loved one of a young cancer patient and not from a young cancer patient themself. Throughout the story Hazel's biggest concern is about not wanting to hurt her loved ones with her passing. Of course that is a concern that we have, but it's obviously not our main one. What I said earlier about this being like any other art about cancer is that this is always an issue in them. You know the like the action hero who lost his wife to cancer archetype. This is not quite that but it's in that wheelhouse. It's the tragedy of the loved one's loss and never the tragedy of the dying. They're only seeing it in the perspective of a loved one so of course the story is going to be about how the patient doesn't want to leave the loved ones. It's eye-rolling at this point.