Sorry, the way you worded it I was taken aback when I believe that you said people don't like Augustus Waters. I, for one, loved his character, possibly even more so than Hazel. I'm aware that due to Alternate Character Interpretation some people see him as pompous, but I for one see him as a poetic and complex individual that I actually wasn't really planning on liking at first, but warmed up to relatively quick when he became fleshed out in a way that I think more fictional characters nowadays need to be. I could go on about why I like him, but I really don't see much of a point in it.
I agree with most of the rest I have to say. Jumping into the romance story felt a bit on the rushed side, and when you have characters like Hazel who are supposedly so socially deprived, I find it hard to believe that they would do so well in a relationship as she did. There was also like, one or two exaggerated moments. I think people like the scene where Hazel and Augustus kiss at the top of the Anne Frank house, but the fact that all the people around them would burst out clapping despite their uneasy feeling towards the cancer patients climbing the building to begin with just seems unrealistic to me. Call me heartless if you will, that's just my opinion.
After rereading your review I realize that I read the part wrong where you said that people who are like Augustus Waters don't exist. It's true, and I think that's what makes him such a great character, because you so little often encounter people even remotely similar.
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Yes, good book.
This book is immensely popular with a lot of people my age on the internet. So I didn't know exactly what to expect, since a lot of popular books tend to be overrated. However, I was surprised by the clever way this book is build, and how the tugging at the heartstrings never becomes unbearable.
Although there are a tad too many contrived coincidences and cliches enabling the main romance of the story, the way it is written makes it worth your time. Simply put, people like Augustus Waters don't really exist. If they do, you'd be extremely hard-pressed to meet them. And the way our protagonist and this boy fall in love and fall into sort of a hapless romance is uneven, a bit rushed, and hard to think of as realistic.
Even then, there is a lot of poignancy to be found. The author writes a lot about pretentiousness in his character dialogue and that seems to be a side effect of his unconscious desire not to fall into it, and he halfway doesn't. His book isn't pretentious, but the way it's written makes it so that the audience for this novel often consists out of pretentious people.
So, in conclusion. A good read. Recommended. Some of these popular books are actually pretty good. I listed a couple of bad points, but the good far outweighs the bad. And the good is REALLY good.
The main character is amazing. That's all.