5 Feet Apart – Rachael Lippincott

This book is my absolute favorite standalone, I can’t even BEGIN to explain how amazing the entire plot was. I hope I have permission to fangirl over this book, because I will rant about how much I love this amazing book. Let’s gooo!

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So one of the two main characters, Stella Grant, is a patient with Cystic Fibrosis. She always wants to be the one on top of the lists, trying to make sure everything’s in order, and get her new lungs as soon as possible, because she just wants to stop living two lives, one with her friends and family, which she can enjoy, while the other life stays rooted in the hospital, waiting for someone to put her on the list for getting new lungs.

Enter the sarcastic, B. Cepacia & CF patient, Will Newman, who has been transitioning from hospital to hospital with his mother, in search for a cure for B. Cepacia, meaning that he has to be 6 feet away from any other person with CF, for fear he might infect anyone and erase their chances of getting new lungs. He honestly just wants to get the entire thing over with, because he hates hospitals. But when Stella and Will lock eyes, they know that, sooner or later, they won’t be able to lose their companionship, and later, the forbidden love that will infect both if they stride closer to each other than 6 feet apart.

To be honest, I think that it’s unfair that Will had to have B. Cepacia, and he’s just a lost person trying to find his way back to the world, while battling with CF, B. Cepacia, and the shortened duration of his life, which is making it a whole lot harder for him to enjoy his minutes while they tick by and wisp into the air. Plus, when Stella comes into his life, he feels like the world could get better if he was with her (obviously not at first) but he realizes how amazing that she is, and despite her covet of new lungs, he wants to be even closer to her, and actually be in a relationship with her. I think that’s the sweetest, most amazing thing that anyone could’ve thought, and besides, THEY NEED EACH OTHER.

Stella however, has suffered many losses. The fact that her sister died, her parents split up, and she contracted CF would make any random person wish that they never existed, but Stella is way past that point. She keeps up on almost everything, trying desperately to be organized and well-mannered, despite the fact that all she wants to do is cry sometimes and plead the universe of why, why she got stuck with CF and why she can’t be close to Will in the way she wants to be, to hug him and just to hold his hand, so that their deprivation of each other slowly fades away, but the lingering nostalgic feeling still there.

I found this book quite similar to John Green’s The Fault in our Stars. Both books have two terminally ill teenagers who fall in love slowly, and their relationship overall is similar as well. Both pairs start off as people who don’t like each other, to acquaintances, to friends, to actual lovers who can’t really stay away from each other. But I feel like Stella and Will have a more abstract relationship than Gus and Hazel Grace from The Fault in our Stars. Firstly, Stella and Will are so, soo different from each other; they’re like Yin and Yang. Stella is absolutely controlling her life with each individual step, while Will believes in taking in the short slivers of freedom and doesn’t really care about future events, because he knows that ultimately, he’s gonna die anyway. Stella keeps things planned with lists while Will wants to turn 18 soon and explore the world that isn’t just hospital after hospital.

And they have to keep 6 feet apart…

But that doesn’t even deter them. Their liking for each other flourishes into an even deeper love, and they share the deepest secrets with each other, not caring about what the other might think, just wanting someone to share something with. And while there are few predictable elements in Five Feet Apart, the overall story was a huge tenderly emotional, and heartfelt book that I would give anything to read and experience again for the first time. The romance does tend to speed up, but given the chances and circumstances of being in the hospital with isolating characteristics, it makes all the more sense. Rachael Lippincott delivered an interesting, intriguing, emotional, outstanding, and stupendously written read with wonderfully plotted characters and a colorful plot that I couldn’t help but fall in love with. This book would be an absolute INFINITY out of 10 stars because this book never failed to impress me, and never, EVER disappointed me.

Thank you so, SOOOOO much Ms. Rachael Lippincott for providing my book sense with another amazing masterpiece that I would recommend to anyone who’d ask me for a good book to read. Thank you, thank you, thank you! And I thank you readers for listening to me rant about my review for this book. Please comment below if you read the book and tell me your favorite parts of it. And don’t be afraid to say hi <3