A Quick Look At... Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott
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?
What it is: a mega-selling contemporary YA romance that was written to sell a tied-in movie
What it’s about: two teens in the final stages of cystic fibrosis who fall in love
Who it’s by: screenwriters Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis and adapted by Rachael Lippincott
Best bits: the protagonist’s to-do list obsession, the doctors with some common sense, the book’s sincerity in talking about cystic fibrosis
Protagonist in a sentence: perfectionist Youtuber with cystic fibrosis who refuses to put her parents through the death of another child
Love interest in a sentence: a spoiled rich devil-may-care guy who refuses his treatments and wants the chance to just live instead
Read it if: you really, really liked The Fault in Our Stars
Skip it if: you don’t enjoy melodrama or stories of romance-above-all