John Green Just Published His First Book in a Decade, and It Was Worth the Wait

The first John Green book I ever read was The Fault in Our Stars—I quickly followed this up by borrowing Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns and Turtles All the Way Down from the library. I've been a voracious reader since I was a kid (I could do 20 books a week in the summer), and Green's writing roped me in because, unlike many YA authors, he spoke to teenagers like they were adults. His novels often discuss themes that are heavy, staring the harsh realities of life in the face with humor and a grace that honors the complexity of young adulthood, taking teenagers seriously without gratuitous hardship à la Euphoria. Green's last fictional foray was Turtles All the Way Down (2017), which was followed by two tomes of non fiction: The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021) and Everything Is Tuberculosis (2025). When it was announced that his eighth book—and first novel in nearly ten years—was forthcoming, I raced to get my hands on it. Hollywood, Ending released on September 22, and it did not disappoint.

Hollywood, Ending is told from the dual perspectives of recovering child star (and Jennette McCurdy-esque character) Juniper Castillo, who is grieving the death of her abusive mother, and up-and-comer Kai Laramie, a brooding young man with a dark past that threatens to upend the present. The two are pulled into the blinding orbit of bonafide movie star Matthew Malone when the youngsters co-star alongside him in the biopic, Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. As the story moves from the production set to the frenetic crunch of the press junket, Juniper and Kai find themselves under increasing scrutiny as their fame begins to rise. At the height of it all, Kai's past catches up with them, and what happens next will determine if the momentum the two of them have built—personally and professionally—could catapult them to real stardom or send them home with tails between their legs.

The Fault in Our Stars is my favorite John Green novel, and I think that's part of the reason why I enjoyed Hollywood, Ending. The latter was familiar enough to bring in the hallmarks of Green's writing—incredibly funny, downright earnest—into a completely new story that, at the end, is still about young people trying to make their way in the world.

The big standout was the fictional movie, Andy Warhol Never Gets Old, which Green uses as a vehicle to examine the price of fame and the necessity of art in our lives. He crafts the movie with the same specificity as An Imperial Affliction from The Fault in Our Stars (whose own references are top notch: Peter De Vries' The Blood of the Lamb and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest). The film, like the book, anchors the story with its details and the characters' attachment to it, ultimately revealing their quirks, foibles, struggles and dreams.

Over the year's I've followed the news as Green's books—notably, Looking for Alaska—have been banned from libraries with the protest that he writes adult material for children. The subject matter is tough—death, depression, disorders, traumas—and Hollywood, Ending isn't an exception. But teenagers and young adults will have to face life's hardships sooner or later, and dropping themselves into books so tenderly written with reverence for this time of their lives is not a bad way to go about it. Hollywood, Ending was marketed as Green's first work of adult fiction, but I hope that this book makes its way into the YA section, too.