Brilliant chemist Neesha believes Emma has run away to avoid taking the heat for the duo’s illegal drug enterprise. When talented poet Emma disappears, three students, distrusting of the school administration, launch their own investigation. Redemption Preparatory is a cross between the Vatican and a top-secret research facility: The school is rooted in Christian ideology (but very few students are Christian), Mass is compulsory, cameras capture everything, and “maintenance” workers carry Tasers. In a remote part of Utah, in a “temple of excellence,” the best of the best are recruited to nurture their talents. Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues to make it through Hazel and Gus’ poignant journey. (Fiction. He takes on Big Questions that might feel heavy-handed in the words of any other author: What do oblivion and living mean? Then he deftly parries them with humor: “My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched.” Dog-earing of pages will no doubt ensue. Green’s signature style shines: His carefully structured dialogue and razor-sharp characters brim with genuine intellect, humor and desire. From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page. The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his-based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. She’s smart, snarky and 16 she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He’s a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus “Gus” Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. She’s fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors.
He’s in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs.
Ostensibly a thriller, this debut misses its mark. The sexual assault narrative is largely sidelined for the sake of a plodding mystery. The trio’s amateur detective work leaves much to be desired as far as plotting is concerned, jumping from hunch to hunch on minimal evidence, with the bulk of their investigation focusing on abuses of power within a local church. The circumstances of Andrew’s untimely arrival on the scene provoke suspicions-was he involved in Catherine’s rape or even the murder? Yet Catherine seems implausibly quick to dismiss these suspicions out of a desire to bring Andrew into the fold due to his close connection to the local police department and thus, clues. She is helped by Henry, an old friend, and Andrew, a young man who shows up at her house one day to return the coat she left behind in her assailant’s room the night of her assault. As the police investigation into the murder gets underway, Catherine becomes determined to do her own sleuthing, desperate for answers and an outlet for her trauma. Shortly after her return, someone close to her is murdered in her Washington hometown. A college student tries to solve the murder in the wake of her own sexual assault.Ĭatherine, a first semester freshman, comes home reeling from a sexual assault that took place at a college party just before winter break.
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