“The Fault in Our Stars” is young adult author John Green’s fourth solo book. After reading it, I can honestly say it is nothing like I had expected, in the best possible way.

When I heard one of my favorite authors was writing a new book my excitement skyrocketed, and when I heard that it was about a girl with cancer my excitement diminished. A book about cancer makes me think of something sad, depressing and heart-wrenching. The only other possibility that had been in my mind, which I was hoping for, was a sad but empowering story.

After reading the book, neither scenario fit the story. What I did get was what Green always delivers: teenagers on an adventure, humor, romance and an abundance of good quotes throughout the book.

Yes, the narrator, 16-year-old Hazel Lancaster, has cancer, which is mentioned often, but it is not the forefront of the story. The story is of her and Augustus Waters, whom she meets at a cancer support group.

Cancer played an important part in their meeting, but it isn’t what keeps the story going. Cancer merely plays the role in bringing the two teenagers together and helps give them a maturity not usually found amongst people of their age.

As most of Green’s books, romance is one of the themes prevalent in the story. “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once,” Hazel said.

The middle of the book seems to slow down for a chapter or so, but just as quickly as it slowed it picked back up, and once again I couldn’t put the book down.

Something that is a key point in the novel is that the characters wrestle with the idea of a fictional story only being a window into a part of its character’s lives and that’s something that this, and all, of Green’s books have made me think about.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is long enough to stand alone, and engaging enough to keep you reading to the very end.

It takes a special author to get characters to a point where not only am I connected to them while reading their story, but I wonder what had happened to them before the book and what would happen after.