“Vanity’s a debilitating affliction. You’re so absorbed in yourself it’s impossible to love anyone other than oneself, leaving you weak with
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“Vanity’s a debilitating affliction. You’re so absorbed in yourself it’s impossible to love anyone other than oneself, leaving you weak without realization of it. It’s quite sad. You’ve no idea what you’re missing either. You will never know real love and your life will pass you by.”
This book was like nothing I expected, like nothing I’ve ever read. Surprising. Beautiful. Heartfelt. Real. Profound. Moralizing. It brought me incredible sadness and incredible joy. It gave me perspective reminding me of what matters most and took me on a really powerful journey of self-awareness, hope and love. Fisher Amelie writes beautifully… her words effortless, smooth and perfectly paced. This book just really captivated me so completely. It felt almost as if someone was just telling me a story, intimate and real. I was so lost in this story, I really FELT everything. And it’s been awhile, but it totally brought tears to my eyes as I felt sadness, elation and the power of metamorphosis.
Meet Sophie Price.
Beautiful. Rich. Queen bee. Vain.
To quote the synopsis, she’s a “friend using, drug abusing, sex addict from Los Angeles…every girlfriend’s worst nightmare and every boy’s fantasy.” To say she lives a charmed life is an understatement. She’s not afraid to trample over anything and anyone to get what she wants.
“Freedom is… Absolutely no restrictions. I abandoned myself to every whim I felt. Every want I fulfilled and every desire was quenched. I wanted for nothing. Except attention.”
Despite Sophie living such an extravagant life, she endures without the love and attention of her parents. Everything in her life runs only as deep as surface level. She’s forced to keep up appearances. Perception is everything in her world… and in her world she was expected to be absolutely perfect.
“My heart was in a perpetual state of sadness… I lived a fragile existence. I knew it even then but feigning I didn’t was easier than embracing something so altogether daunting. If I faced what I’d truly created for myself, a life of debauchery and seedy fulfillment, I knew I couldn’t have lived another day and self-preservation was very much still alive in me. I loved myself too much to say goodbye. So, I would go on living just as I had been because it was the only life I knew.”
After yet another night of partying, she’s caught with cocaine for a second time. Her father aims to teach her a lesson, but little does she know her life is about to determinately change in every single way. She’s forced to take a very real look at who she is.
“I stood in front of the mirror and took a good hard look. I was as bare as I could make myself, no makeup with wet, stringy hair. I hated to look at myself in this state. I didn’t feel real. I felt too exposed and that made me exceedingly nervous, but I made myself look that morning. I memorized that girl. That girl was the real me. Frightened. Worthless. A terrible friend. Terrible daughter. Well educated but so limited in ideas worth having. Beautiful yet repulsive.. And finally honest.”
I have to admit, despite her vain and odious existence, my heart really hurt for Sophie. Growing up bereft of love and affection can really shape your life in the worst possible way. At 14, she fired her nanny and her parents agreed that she could raise herself. At 14 years old! No moral compass guided her choices and in a world of money, vanity and expectations of perfection, she was destined to be lonely and unhappy.
I don’t want to spoil any part of the experience you’ll get from this book… her “punishment” or even the primary catalyst for change. I’ll try my best to tell you more without disclosure.
She soon meets Dingane and she is struck speechless.
“A deep, punching sensation washed over my entire body and I almost feel to my knees at the powerful impression. My breaths became labored and I fought for a clear head. A balmy, scorching but unbelievably ecstasy-ridden awareness swam through my body. An exhilarating, pleasant haze settled over me and it… Burned. So. Good. This was a feeling of realization. I stood there, relishing the effects.”
But he is not impressed. He is unfazed by Sophie. He knows her type.
“Girl, you are the epitome of spoiled. I can smell it in your expensive perfume, in the quality of your ridiculous clothing, in the bracelet wrapped ’round that delicate wrist.” He closed the gap between us and all the air sucked from the room. “You won’t last out here. You’ll stay blind to the environment that surrounds you. You’ll live in your clean, perfect bubble and return to your posh life come six months. You are….you. I know your kind. I’ve seen it all before. You will never wake up.”
But her journey to awakening has undeniably begun. Her transformation waiting to be begin. She comes to a place so radically different from what she’s known, surrounded meagerness, simplicity, violence, tragedy, beauty, love and surprisingly… joy. It was during her time in this place where I couldn’t help but let the tears flow down my face. I really loved that Fisher Amelie brought attention to the issues touched upon in this book.
The pacing of the story is brilliant. It really allows you to connect with all the elements that are critical to Sophie’s metamorphosis. Each of the characters are achingly beautiful… Karina, Charles, Mandisa, Ian. It built slowly, deeply until my heart was so completely entrenched in the story, so invested in Sophie and so in love with Ian Aberdeen.
Ian is such a wonderful character. He’s selfless, kind, hard-working and devoted to the people around him.
“He was breathtaking. Breathtakingly sexy. Breathtakingly beautiful. Breathtakingly real. Just breathtaking.”
But we learn there is more to Ian… he has a past. Slowly, the connection with Sophie intensifies and the way they fall in love is so beautiful and real. It is now one of my favorite love stories ever.
“You have no idea what you do to me. I’ve felt things for you these past few months that don’t seem healthy. I’ve wanted you so desperately I’m afraid it may not be natural. You consume my thoughts, Sophie…You’ve arrested my senses and I can’t seem to get enough of you. That’s what scares me. I’m so deep there’s no getting out for me. You own me, you know?”
He sees past Sophie’s exterior into the beauty of her heart. He falls in love with the kindness she now shoes, with the love she now exudes.
“You are so gosh damn beautiful in here,” he said, tapping my chest, “that what’s here,” he spoke, running the side of his hand down my face, “is magnified tenfold and that is a sight to behold.”
I’m telling you… if you want your heart to fill… if you want a love story that you won’t forget… this is your book. But for Sophie, this journey is so much more than finding the love of a man… it’s finding her ability to love herself, to put others before her own happiness.
“Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted to keep me
That’s what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. BUT NOT BY A MAN. I knew then that I never needed to be kept by a man. What I needed was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I wanted to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product.”
I can’t say enough about how wonderful and unique this book is. It really affected me, deep in my heart and in my soul. Tears came down yet again at the end of the book… it touched me that much. I seriously will not forget this beautiful and moving story. I think one of the lessons I took is that perhaps we can all change… whether it be a small part or a large transformation like Sophie… we just need to reach inside ourselves and be brave enough to try.
I so look forward to reading Greed, the next book in The Seven Deadly Series. This will be Spencer’s story.
“No one can know sincere happiness, Sophie, without first having known sorrow. One can never appreciate the enormity and rareness of such a fiery bliss without seeing misery, however unfair that may be.”
Absolutely amazing. An emotional, powerful, piercing and heartfelt story of love and friendship, loss and surviving the difficult “side effects of dyingAbsolutely amazing. An emotional, powerful, piercing and heartfelt story of love and friendship, loss and surviving the difficult “side effects of dying.” Beautifully written and deserving of all the praise it has garnered, I will never forget the gripping story of Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters. 6 stars.
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“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”
There are so many things I LOVED about this book. So many elements… so many big things and subtle things. I loved seeing the witty dialogue come to life through elegant and elaborate syntax. I loved that John Green didn’t talk down to his young adult readers, but rather banked on their intelligence, referencing greats like William Carlos Williams and T.S. Eliot (the poem mentioned at one point, The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock is one of my all-time favorites). I loved that he captured the transcendental and deep musings of insightful teenagers, particularly those whom are terminally sick and suddenly find themselves short of time and forced to more seriously ponder the profound and interminable questions that plague their thoughts. And perhaps most significantly, I love that he was able to engender this story that so completely captured my heart, then shattered it into a million little pieces and was nonetheless able to deliver a thoughtful, honest glimpse into painful world of cancerverse. This is a story that is simultaneously complex and simple…we see introspective, esoteric reveries juxtaposed with the irrefutable reality that dying simply sucks.
“Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.”
Hazel is dying. 16 years old. Thyroid cancer. Mets in the lungs. She walks around with an oxygen tank and a cannula affixed to her nostrils at all times, helping to deliver air to her “lungs that sucked at being lungs.” She’s an intelligent, thoughtful girl who challenges the expected cancer platitudes espoused by the non-sick who mean well, but in the end, are only successful in making the sick feel like “others.” Forced to contemplate the sadness and reality of her imminent demise, as well as of those around her, she questions the usefulness of her cancer support group, where despite challenged to “live her best life today,” names read off a list of those whom are no longer there, make it clearly evident that you can only cheat death for so long. And it’s at this support group where she one day meets the boy who would leave his scar on her.
”My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great sat-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should.”
Augustus “Gus” Waters lost his right leg to osteosarcoma and is now in remission. He’s a friend of Issac, another friend in the support group who lost an eye at a young age and has recently been told that his other eye must be removed, leaving him to be permanently blind. Augustus is immediately captivated by Hazel and the two form a friendship that was fated to be so much more. Hazel has already survived so much, permanently living in pain, fighting for every breath, every single moment of her life. However, it’s not the pain that plagues her, it’s the fear of leaving those she loves behind… leaving them to be shells of who they used to be. Augustus quickly becomes someone she cares about and she’s afraid she’ll leave him wounded in her battle too.
“I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevolent force in the lives of people I loved.”
Their relationship is simply unadulterated beauty. It’s so special watching two kindred spirits, two clever quirky people connect so completely. Hazel and Augustus are not strangers to pain, and their individual fears are so real and warranted and heartfelt that they real gut you, because you know as the reader that in a book about two kids with cancer, a happy ending is not in the stars. I love the fact that they are so thoughtful, the terminality of their life forcing them to ponder the bigger, unanswerable questions of life. It’s incredibly moving and heartbreaking to read about these brave young kids and how they wrap their minds around cancer and death.
“That’s the thing about pain,” Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. “It demands to be felt”
I also loved that despite their transcendental musings and their expertise in the vernacular of cancer, they were kids… teenagers who played video games and obsessed over a book (An Imperial Affliction by the drunk recluse, yet brilliant Peter Van Houten). I found myself so quickly entrenched in this story, deeply devoted to its characters, prematurely distressed at what was yet to come. The fact that they fall in love is even harder to experience because I was so happy for them and at the same time, so very sad. Augustus is amazing, never afraid to be forthright about his feelings, while Hazen is more cautious with her expressions, but with such a loving heart just the same. Together, they are perfect.
“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities … There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbound set. But Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
I actually experienced this book via audible, in a version narrated by Kate Rudd. She was amazing too. I loved listening to the story… I could almost hear John Green himself in the speed and wit of the dialogue. I thought the story was so ingenious in the way it pulled you into scenes of funny conversation, then swiftly and unexpectedly delivered emotional gut punches that left you breathless. The last 30% or so had me crying big, fat, ugly, heartfelt tears and I honestly didn’t stop until the last word was read, carrying the heaviness in my heart for the remainder of the day and even still. It’s a beautiful story of love and life and figuring out how to work with the cruel hand some are inexplicably dealt. As I mentioned above, the book is deserving of all the accolades it has received and I anxiously await the movie next summer. This moving book solidly earns 6 stars from me.
“I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
Magic. J.A. Redmerski once again recreates that special, intangible something… that intense and enduring connection between two people that makes thisMagic. J.A. Redmerski once again recreates that special, intangible something… that intense and enduring connection between two people that makes this story so unforgettable. I felt every moment as Camryn and Andrew unravel the lingering tangles from their past and embark on a journey to define their always. I just can’t get enough of their romance. -------------------
“You’re the world to me,” I whisper onto her lips. “I hope you never forget that.”
“I’ll never forget,” she whispers back… “But if I ever do, for whatever reason, I hope you’ll always find a way to remind me.”
It’s supremely difficult to begin reading a sequel when you hold the original novel in such high esteem. Before I commenced, I told myself to avoid over-analysis, and simply experience what the book had to offer. And in doing just that, I enjoyed every well-written minute of it. This story is one that is full of emotion… this sequel is all heart and feeling. It’s about the restlessness of one’s own soul, the disquietude of the heart and finding the road to forever.
In this next chapter of their story and after surviving Andrew’s near-death experience, Camryn and Andrew try to define what’s next for them… what’s home… what feels right. After life on the road, settling down has been, well, unsettling. With so much to look forward to including a wedding to plan, their future is bright. Camryn, however, still searches for that feeling of rightness… the moment where fate bestows that illusive “aha moment” that gives insight to where they should go and what their forever looks like. Gripping onto the happiness before them, she uses that bright spot to keep her moving forward. When tragedy befalls, however, and their world shatters, they both lose their way and succumb to grief. Camryn in particular begins to shut down, retreating into herself, hiding the pain behind a facade of normalcy.
“I feel like Jekyll and Hyde. All the time. When in front of Andrew I put on my happy face, but not as if I’m faking it. I am happy. I think. But the second I’m alone again, it’s like I become someone else. I feel like someone invisible is always standing behind me, flipping a fucking switch inside my brain. Off. On. Off. On. O–no, On.”
It’s evident, even from The Edge of Never, that Camryn deals with pain and loss through compartmentalization and shutting people out. She buries things so deeply that she avoids facing them altogether. This time, however, she not only ignores the pain, she numbs it. Dangerous habits take hold and Andrew, always so in tune to Camryn, becomes significantly concerned.
“My girl was broken. It was scarin’ the shit outta me more every day, the person she was becoming.”
So Andrew does what he does best, which is do whatever it takes to make Camryn happy and life on the road, in the seat of that well-worn Chevelle, has always been the best medicine for their souls.
“This is our life. We met on the road; we grew to know and to love each other on the road. It’s where we were meant to be for however long, and it’s what we’re going to do until it becomes clear that we were meant to do something else.”
It’s during this time that Camryn searches within herself to find her happiness and finally face that deeply buried pain. I think that one of the reasons I love this series so much is because of they love they share. You can really feel the fact that they are soul mates… kindred spirits that love and understand each other so completely. That magic is tough to engender, but with Camryn and Andrew, you feel it spark from the page. This story made me fall in love with Andrew Parrish all over again. Although the story alternates between Andrew and Camryn, I absolutely loved hearing the story unfurl largely through Andrew’s POV. He is so selfless, so giving, so loving that every time he says something so honest and emotionally charged, it just levels me.
I truly believe fans of the original book will love it. Heartfelt and poignant, the story of Camryn and Andrew will always be among my all-time favorites. And let me tell you, it has the most perfect of perfect epilogues! I LOVED IT! It’s what I want an epilogue to be each and every time. I can’t wait to have this book on my top shelf, where my favorite romances sit for me to constantly recall. I love this book. Love this series. Love Camryn and Andrew and hope you will too!
“I feel free with you.” she says. “I feel like I can do anything. Go anywhere. Be anything that I want.”
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