Falling in love with fictional characters

"It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you."

Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Books. Oh, books. With your promise of escape and of course a decent story the majority of the time, you always surprise me.

I suppose I should be addressing the authors of these books rather than the books themselves.

Authors. Especially you good ones. Like you, John Green or Jay Asher or Laurie Halse Anderson or Madeline L'Engle or Suzanne Collins. You suck me in to these gripping experiences of all sorts. And sometimes, just sometimes, I fall in love with one of your characters. The first time this happened to me it was Calvin O'Keefe from A Wrinkle in Time. I had a massive crush on that boy. The most recent fictional boy I love is Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars.

I had been waiting very impatiently for this book since......... October I believe. It did not disappoint in the least. It was a roller coaster ride (no, it did not only go up as Augustus Waters would have me believe). I actually cried at a few points in this book. So, John Green, thank you for giving me Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster. For the short amount of time they were with me, they affected me greatly. I don't care that they were too witty to be actual teenagers. They're fictional, they're allowed to be extra witty. Thank you for making me fall in love with a fictional amputee boy and allowing me to empathize with a fictional girl with debilitating cancer in a way that I didn't think I would be able to.

For me, the mark of a great work of literature is the effect it leaves. Slaughterhouse Five, To Kill A Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time, Speak, Thirteen Reasons Why and A Farewell to Arms are examples of this. To this list I now add The Fault in Our Stars. It is the first book to make me actually cry that I can think of right now.

So, what should you do with this information? You should seek out and read this book. If you look around, you'll probably find an autographed copy. Either way, signed or unsigned, read the book. You will laugh. You will cry. You will become incredibly angry. You will fall in love with the story. Just do it.