"Everyone in this world is breathing borrowed air."
― Will Newman
I don’t really know how to start reviewing this book, it’s pretty difficult keeping in mind that it talks about a real illness that affects more than 70,000 people in the world. I’m not an expert about cystic fibrosis and luckily I don’t know anyone near me suffering from it, so I‘m not going to talk about how the book deals with the illness, the treatments nor about the medical stuff, because I can’t. So I’m going to talk about the writing, how Lippincott has adapted the screenplay to a novel and why I left the book aside for a few days before the final chapters.
At first I thought that the homonym movie was based on the book, but then I read that it was actually the vice versa, the book was written based on the screenplay, which is kind of rare for me, because I’ve never read a book based on a screenplay before, or at least that I know. But I didn’t think about that while reading it, because it’s so well written that I have never ever imagined it was taken from a screenplay. So I guess this sums up how good Lippincott’s writing and adaptation is.
But apart from the good writing, I found it a bit boring around chapters 15 and 20, don’t ask me why, I just felt like I needed a break because it was all like a routine. I’d taken the book two days in a row and what I’d read was alike, as if nothing really interesting was happening, so I put it aside. But then I knew that after these few pages something would happen, so I decided to keep reading. And luckily, because the last chapters were the best part of the book.
In a nutshell, Five Feet Apart is a beautiful love story, that will melt your heart as long as it’ll break it. And it also makes you feel impotent, because you can see and feel how the two main characters need each other’s touch but can’t have it because it could literally kill them both. If you’re looking for a cry-a-river read, this is a really good choice.
Finally I want to talk a bit about spreading awareness of these minority illnesses that the amount of people who suffer from them make an actual large minority. I’ve heard about cystic fibrosis before, but I’ve never thought it was such a dangerous illness that affected so many people. But now that I’ve read Five Feet Apart I’m more aware of it, and that’s made me realize that writing a book and/or making a film is a good way to get to people and aware them about such illnesses.
On an additional note, I’d really appreciate if you could take a look at this link: La Marató, it’s a Catalan non-profit foundation that once a year makes a fundraising for research, each year for a different illness, and this time is about rare diseases, including cystic fibrosis, and if you want you can make a donation too. Thank you.
Genre: contemporary, romance, young-adult.
