By Clara Oswin Oswald
(Yes, I am aware this “whale” hello gif has already been used on our blog–but I saw it and I cannot stop laughing!)
Hello Chums! If you haven’t already guessed, today I’m going to dissect Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. What you DON’T know is that I’m also going to talk about The Fault in Our Stars. And then I’m going to compare the two books. Aren’t I just full of surprises today! Before I begin to trash talk either of the books, I’ll give you some quick plot overviews, complete with bullet points and equations.
The Fault in Our Stars
- Hazel Grace=Depressed girl with cancer
- Augustus Waters= Contemplative boy – 1 leg + a cheerful attitude
- Hazel + Augustus= LOVE
- Hazel + Augustus + Cancer= The Fault in Our Stars
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
- Greg= Chubby insecure boy with a foul mouth
- Earl= Greg’s black friend with an even fouler mouth
- Greg + Earl + Filmmaking= Disaster
- Rachel= Girl with leukemia who dated Greg ‘once upon a time’
- Greg + Earl + Rachel + Filmmaking + Cancer= Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
BOOM. Any further questions you have will be cleared up later.
The hard thing about reviewing cancer books is that I know nothing about cancer, so I tried to look at both books from a writer’s perspective. If I were to give both books awards, it’d end up looking like this:
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl wins MOST REALISTIC
The Fault in our Stars wins BETTER BOOK IN GENERAL
I don’t have anything against a book being realistic; however, I read books to escape from the world, not to have the world crammed down my throat in the most hopeless way possible. The ending of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was MASSIVELY depressing. What bothered me most about the book is that there was no character arc for Greg. I mean, come on—even Earl had a character arc! To turn back to the equations:
Earl1 + the book= Earl2
Greg1 + the book= Greg1
There’s nothing more frustrating than a main character not changing over the course of the book, because it’s super unrealistic. There’s NO WAY that Greg could have gone through all the events in the book without his character ending up even a little different at its end.
The other big turn off for me about Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was the language. It wasn’t just the occasional cuss word; noooo, every page was all like: @#$&%@!!!! Sex Joke @#%$#@^@!!!! Sex Joke #$%@ &^$# @$#%!!! Sex Joke $%#!
You get the picture. The language was so bad, I almost stopped reading the book. My final recommendation would be:
“Just watch the movie!”
I NEVER say that, so take it to heart.
On to Augustus!!!! (Aka The Fault in Our Stars)
As you can probably guess, Augustus Waters was my main reason for liking this book so much. I’m aware that he is kind of a trope (the deep-thinking hot guy), but I don’t mind tropes if they are well-written, and John Greene certainly is an AMAZING writer. What made the book so sad was its ironic ending. The reader expected this to happen:
Gus – Hazel=
