The Fault in Our Stars

After their trip to Amsterdam, where Hazel and Augustus meet Peter Van Houten (who turns out to be a bitter, hostile alcoholic rather than the wise figure they imagined) and share their first kiss and later their first night together, Augustus reveals devastating news: his osteosarcoma has returned and spread, and he is now terminally ill rather than in remission. The revelation recontextualizes their entire Amsterdam trip as a kind of final gift before his decline.

Back in Indianapolis, Augustus's health deteriorates rapidly. He is hospitalized in the ICU as the cancer spreads through his body, including to his brain, robbing him of some of his sharp wit and control over his own body, which he finds humiliating. Sensing that death is near, Augustus arranges a "pre-funeral," a small gathering where his friend Isaac and Hazel deliver eulogies for him while he is still alive to hear them. Hazel's eulogy is unpolished and honest rather than grand, expressing her uncertainty about how to sum up a love so large in a small space of time. Not long after this gathering, Augustus dies.

Hazel is left grieving deeply. At Augustus's funeral, Peter Van Houten unexpectedly appears, attempting to apologize to Hazel for his cruelty in Amsterdam and revealing a personal tragedy of his own (a daughter who died of cancer) that shaped his bitterness and his writing of An Imperial Affliction. Hazel largely rebuffs him, still processing her anger and loss.

In the aftermath, Hazel discovers that Augustus had been writing something in his final weeks: a eulogy for her, drafted in the same notebook pages he used to correspond with Van Houten. Lidewij, Van Houten's former assistant, finds these pages among Van Houten's things and sends them to Hazel. In it, Augustus reflects on love, pain, and choice, writing that hurt is unavoidable in life but that people can choose who is given the power to hurt them, and that he is grateful he chose Hazel. The novel closes with Hazel affirming, in response to his words, that she is happy with her choice too, ending the book on a note of aching but resolved love rather than despair.