Book Blog #135: This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl with Lori and Wayne Earl

Title: This Star Won't Go Out
Author: Esther Earl with Lori and Wayne Earl
# of Pages: 431 (hardback)
Genre: Non-fiction, YA, Biography
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: A collection of the journals, fiction, letters, and sketches of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Photographs and essays by family and friends will help to tell Esther’s story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her.
Review:

"I don't know what I've been doing...people online are still saying things like, 'thank you, you're an inspiration' 'yr amazing' 'wow you're famous' 'you're so beautiful inside and out.' ...But I'm still Estee and I've done nothing else????" -Esther Earl, This Star Won't Go Out, page 305

This quote is defiantly not the most inspiration or positive quote in Esther Earl's This Star Won't Go Out, but it does a good job of summing up the book.

TSWGO is about of girl who, like Hazel from The Fault in Our Stars, finds herself "quite unextraordinary" (Hazel, The Fault in Our Stars). And to some, she would be if it weren't for her cancer. 

And this may or may not be true. I'm not even sure myself. We won't know if she would have ever made as big of an impact on people if she didn't have cancer because she did. Due to this, I am certain of one thought; she was defiantly not unextraordinary. 

I struggled with my opinion on this book. Judging by the time it took me to read it, I know that it wasn't the ideal read because I did not feel pressured to read it, to find out what happened next in her story. But it was by no means a bad book either. 

The quote at the beginning of this book resonates what I felt I learned from her memoir. Esther was just a regular girl with "normal" (because really, what's normal?) interests who happened to be really, really sick. There's often that barrier between people who have cancer and people who don't. Cancer patients are sometimes thought to be too different from others because they're dying, or because people think they need to be pitied, or because people think they're suddenly idol/celebrity, or for whatever reason people have created this division. But they aren't that different. Aren't all of us dying? Haven't we all at some point been been/wanted to be pitied? Aren't celebrities human too?

Of course, everything I'm saying now could be pointless to some of you reading. I'm sure all of us know somewhere in our mind that cancer patients are indeed just like normal people (especially if we have know the people pre-cancer). And now that I go back over what I've written, I realize I lost track of what I originally wanted to say...

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wanted to know more about Esther, the girl who was a nerdfighter and loved Harry Potter and a lot less of Esther, the inspirational girl who had cancer and was so brave and strong...

That was what frustrates me the most. The majority of the documents used to create this book mostly told her cancer story. The cancer seems to overshadow HER (although it became part of her). But I could hear about the cancer from so many others. I want to know what made the members of Catitude think she was amazing.

I'm giving this book three stars for being interesting overall, but lacking focus on important aspects of Esther's life.