Luke Passwater | Staff Illustrator

I was surprised with a lingering hope I didn’t know I needed in the wake of reading John Green’s newest novel, “Hollywood, Ending,” chronicling the lives and love of twenty-somethings trying to make it in Hollywood. Set as the growth of their movie “Andy Warhol Never Gets Old” takes on an exponential trajectory, actors Juniper Castillo and Kai Laramie balance their growing notoriety while forging a way forward when faced with their pasts.

If you don’t know John Green from his young adult bestsellers “Looking for Alaska” and “The Fault in Our Stars,” it’s likely you listened to him in a “Crash Course” video while cramming for an AP World History test in high school or saw a video from “vlogbrothers,” his joint YouTube channel with his brother Hank Green that has over a billion views.

After weeks of slogging through reading after reading for class, this novel was as refreshing as the autumn air outside, as well as significantly more enticing than studying for my bajillion midterms that have also arrived with the changing seasons.

With insightful quips I could rant about for hours, cleverly conspicuous capitalization, and heartfelt references from everything from “The Lorax” to Emily Dickinson, Green reminds of the humanity within us all that never leaves us, even at our worst.

Remarkably, Green turns one of the most cliche tropes, Hollywood romance, into a vehicle for something not only real and meticulously relatable, but that hits home on being a human in a noisy world built on the capitalism of capturing attention. Told through dual perspectives divided into four gripping parts, both the readers and characters uncover what lies beneath the surface of individuals, success, and, of course, Hollywood. 

In a world as jaded as Hollywood, this story reminds of the possibility the future holds that cannot be commodified.