John Green is always careful to say that Hazel's story (the book's protagonist) is not Esther's story, but there can be no doubt that Hazel and Esther Earl, a 16-year old Quincy girl who died of cancer in 2010, had a huge influence in the hit book series turned into film "The Fault in Our Stars" which is now showing in cinemas worldwide.

Esther is a friend of John Green, whom the TFIOS book is also dedicated to. The story and the characters are all fictional but if you've read the book "This Star Won't Go Out" (a book compilation of Esther's emails, letters and journals which John Green helped published), you can see the resemblance of Hazel and Esther.

Green wrote of Earl: “She was young, blessed with a genuinely sophomoric sense of humor, silly, empathetic, madly in love with her friends and family, and a very gifted writer.”

Sadly, Esther died too soon and was never able to read the book dedicated for her.

Green speculated that Esther might have found it “a bit far-fetched,” but he hoped that she would’ve loved it anyway. “I am astonished that the book has found such a broad audience,” he wrote on Tumblr, “but the person I most want to read it never will.”