Me, Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Amazon Synopsis: Up until senior year, Greg has maintained total social invisibility. He only has one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time--when not playing video games and avoiding Earl's terrifying brothers-- making movies, their own versions of Coppola.

To cut a somewhat long story short; this is one of my all time favourite books of the year so far. Only matched by Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. It is one of two books to gain a five star rating from me and I am recommending this to everyone who ever gets the chance to read it.

This book revolves around Greg, a high school boy who from the very beginning of the book does not really want to write this memoir (he says so in the 'writers' preface) nor does he know how to. Greg has one real friend called Earl; a teenager who gets in a lot of trouble and lives with some pretty hard core siblings but really has a heart of gold. One day Greg is forced by his mother to visit Jenny, a girl he once rejected, because she has been diagnosed with cancer. It is about the friendship of this trio and what they get up to over the next few months.

The writing is unique with most of it being in script format. Personally I had never experienced anything like this writing. It worked in a way that every time Greg and his mother started bickering in script form I could hear it and imagine it vividly. There is also a sarcastic humour that had me laughing out loud so much it made my abs hurt. The humour made some depressing subject content easier to digest and in a way more shocking and serious when it did come about as the whole narrative style would change.

Each character in this book had a vibrancy that made them fantastic to experience. These were probably some of the most real, human characters I have ever had the privilege of reading. Their actions and reactions were incredibly visceral in such a way that you cannot help but be affected.

This book gave me a knot in my stomach like very few books have. Truthfully, it is one of four books to truly make me cry. This book was wonderful and to fans of John Green I will stand by my opinion that this is better than The Fault in Our Stars because there are less obnoxiously bitter teenagers that use pointless metaphors and more human beings. To everyone I implore you to read this book, absorb this book.