Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

This book was on my To Read list since it was published, back in 2012. A lot of BookTubers I followed were raving about it and I was eager to see what exactly they were raving about.

Finally, six years later, I got the chance to.

But, backtracking a little first, according to a lecture I attended in university, a certain book by a certain Green author paved the way for ‘sick-lit' to be a genre; I suppose that this book, released only a mere two months after said book, does fall into the same category. Having read both books now, I must say that this one is a much better read, though.

It's more real. There was no sappy life lesson at the end of it, no “inevitable romance between the two main characters”, no magical, exponential personal growth by a fictional teenager. So why read it? Some people questioned the overall message of the book and the whole point of it, saying it was uninspiring, had no meaning, was boring and flat.

I disagree. I don't think that's what the author had in mind while writing this. It's a comedic read that doesn't have fluffy nonsense and doesn't hold back at how crude a young boy's mind can be. It's how awful and ugly life can be, and how sometimes, there isn't a happy ending. And that's okay. We have to be okay when things don't all end up being happily-ever-after, or if tough times don't make tough people. That's life, and that's real.

That's why I like this book so much. It truly isn't like all the others. It doesn't try to be either, which is equally as important.

I watched the movie adaptation a few days ago and while that had some ‘feel-good' elements in it, it wasn't enough to distract me from the message I personally got from the story. The characters are wonderfully flawed and relatable, the plot wasn't overly fictitious, and the pace was just right.

If I had a chance to change the syllabus of that university unit that I took, I would 100% replace the Green book with this one.