Synopsis
Can you love someone you can never touch?
Stella Grant likes to be in control—even though her totally out of control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardize the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions.
The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of this hospital. He couldn’t care less about his treatments, or a fancy new clinical drug trial. Soon, he’ll turn eighteen and then he’ll be able to unplug all these machines and actually go see the world, not just its hospitals.
Will’s exactly what Stella needs to stay away from. If he so much as breathes on Stella she could lose her spot on the transplant list. Either one of them could die. The only way to stay alive is to stay apart. But suddenly six feet doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like punishment.
What if they could steal back just a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them? Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too? (Goodreads)
Thoughts
You may have recently seen the trailer for a swoony new teen movie of the same name,
(starring Jughead, aka Cole Sprouse) and yes, this is the same story. What's strange about
this is that instead of the usual fanfare over a book being published and the movie rights
getting sold, Five Feet Apart is the exact opposite: a novelization of a movie. Reading the book after watching the trailer was interesting because I recognized so many scenes and direct lines.
While I totally understand the desire to cash in on something that fans of The Fault in Our Stars or Everything, Everything will undoubtedly be interested in, it's pretty obvious that the book is meant to generate interest in audiences and also some extra cash. That's all well and good, but the book had the potential to be and do more and it fell short for me.
“The book was better than the movie.” We hear this all the time because the book is always able to provide us with an endless amount of facts, emotions, interaction, and imagination that a movie just can’t fit into a specific time frame or cast the perfect person of your daydreams. In the case of Five Feet Apart, I think the movie might actually provide more nuance and a stronger connection to the budding romance of Stella and Will than the book was able to do.
Cystic Fibrosis is at the very heart of this story. Both of our MCs are struggling with a disease that dictates nearly everything they do in their life. We are lead to believe that both Stella and Will have spent a lot of time in hospitals undergoing treatments for any number of things. I understand not wanting the to bog down a fictional tale with facts and stats, but the book absolutely could have educated readers who know nothing about it in a way that still felt natural by utilizing the fact that Stella has a YouTube channel dedicated to her journey.
Unfortunately, I felt I had to search for more answers than I was given. The book is less than 300 pages, and I wouldn’t have minded Stella or Will discussing the complications they experience, a little bit more about why they have to stay away from CFers but not really from their family and friends, and more of how the medications and treatments work without having to do some outside research (Google, obvz).
This book stays on the surface but there are still ways that it still works as a touching read about first love, loss, and illness. I just felt like the book might be a carbon copy of the movie and I think it would've been okay to expand the world more to give the novel more unique depth.
Rating
This was kind of hard to rate because the fact that I was able to plow through it in such a short time is a testament to it's readability, but it could have been so much more. I'm going to stick with a solid 3 stars...I'm still definitely interested in the movie and I'm certainly not going to discourage people from reading the book...but I'd recommend borrowing over buying (I know, that cover, tho...).
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with
an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
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