What is Five Feet Apart about?
Five Feet Apart is a young adult romance novel by Rachael Lippincott, published on March 1, 2019. It tells the story of two teenagers who meet in a hospital while being treated for cystic fibrosis: Stella Grant, who is seventeen, meticulous, rule-following, and terrified of dying before she has lived; and Will Newman, a new patient who is rebellious, artistic, and convinced that caring too much about anything is how you get hurt. Patients with cystic fibrosis must maintain a minimum distance of six feet from other CF patients to prevent cross-infection — bacteria that are harmless to healthy people can be life-threatening between CF patients whose compromised lungs cannot fight them. Stella and Will begin to fall in love, but they cannot touch. They decide to claim one foot back — walking together five feet apart instead of six. The novel explores what it means to live and love under strict physical limitation, and asks how much of your life you will protect versus how much you will risk to feel it. Five Feet Apart was developed simultaneously with a film adaptation; the Lana Condor and Cole Sprouse film was released in March 2019.
What genre is Five Feet Apart?
Five Feet Apart is young adult contemporary romance with elements of medical drama and coming-of-age fiction. It belongs to a subgenre of YA that includes The Fault in Our Stars by John Green — novels in which romantic love develops in the context of serious illness, and in which the illness is not a background condition but a primary shaping force on everything the characters can and cannot do. The novel is also a character study: Stella's compulsive control of every aspect of her health and her life, and Will's equally compulsive refusal to invest in a future he is not sure he will have, are psychologically specific responses to the same diagnosis, and the novel is as interested in those psychological patterns as it is in the love story.
How many chapters are in Five Feet Apart?
Five Feet Apart summary
Stella Grant has cystic fibrosis and has lived with it her whole life. She knows every protocol, every medication, every risk. She has a meticulous daily regimen — treatments, medications, exercises — and she follows it without exception because she knows that following it gives her the best chance of getting new lungs, which she needs. She also makes life-planning videos for other CF patients, tracking her experiences in the hospital online. She is in the hospital for an exacerbation of her condition and a new clinical trial that might help.
Will Newman is also admitted to the hospital for a new clinical trial — but where Stella is diligent about her care, Will resists it. He has a particularly dangerous bacterial colonization called B. cepacia that makes him ineligible for a lung transplant even if one becomes available. He has essentially made peace with dying and sees no point in the strict regimen. He is an artist; he draws elaborate murals on the walls of wherever he stays.
They meet in the hospital corridor. Stella, who has seen Will skipping treatments, reports him to his nurse Barb, which infuriates him. She proposes a deal: she will help him with his medications if he participates in the clinical trial. He agrees, reluctantly.
The six-foot rule exists between them at all times. No touching. They walk the hospital halls with a long pole between them to maintain distance — Stella's idea, her way of claiming back one foot from the regulation. Five feet instead of six. They begin to talk. They begin to know each other. They fall in love with the terrible specificity of two people who know their time is limited.
Stella's best friend Poe Ramirez is also a CF patient in the same hospital. He and Stella have been friends for years. Poe is gay and has been unable to come out to his conservative family; Stella is the one person he has told. He is also sicker than either of them acknowledge.
Poe dies overnight. Stella, devastated, blames the hospitals and the rules and everything that has kept her from simply living. In grief and rebellion, she and Will go outside — into the snow, into the real world, where there are no corridors to mark their distance and no nurses to enforce the protocol. They come close. They almost touch.
Stella falls through the ice of a frozen pond and Will jumps in to save her. The cold water triggers a severe pulmonary episode. Will, who has breathed the same cold air as Stella at extremely close range, has potentially exposed her to his B. cepacia bacteria. He removes himself from the hospital to protect her — he leaves a letter explaining why — and Stella, in ICU, fighting for her lungs, waits to learn whether a donor has been found.
Lungs are found. Stella survives the transplant.
How does Five Feet Apart end?
Characters in Five Feet Apart
Stella Grant — The female narrator, seventeen, meticulous and controlling. Her response to having CF is to control every variable she can — her treatment schedule, her environment, her life planning. Her arc is learning to live in the uncontrollable gap between what she can manage and what she cannot.
Will Newman — The male narrator, also seventeen, rebellious and fatalistic. His response to an inoperable CF colonization is to invest in nothing and feel nothing. His arc is learning, through Stella, that connection is worth the risk of loss.
Poe Ramirez — Stella's best friend, a gay Latino CF patient who has not come out to his family. His death midway through the novel is the emotional turning point that drives Stella toward risk and away from pure compliance.
Barb — The hospital nurse who oversees both Stella and Will. She is warm, practical, and the closest thing to a parental figure the hospital offers them.
Abby Grant — Stella's older sister, who died in a car accident before the novel begins. Stella's grief for Abby, and the sense that she owes it to Abby to live fully, runs beneath everything she does.
Quotes from Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott
Rachael Lippincott writes about living inside limitation with a directness that makes every small decision feel enormous.
"If I'm going to die, I'd like to actually live first."
"How long will I live my life afraid of what-ifs?"
"Everyone in this world is breathing borrowed air."
Frequently asked questions
Is Five Feet Apart based on a true story?
Five Feet Apart is fiction, but it was inspired in part by real CF patients who shared their experiences online. The six-foot cross-infection rule between CF patients is real — it exists in CF care guidelines and is a genuine constraint that CF patients live with. The film version, which came out simultaneously with the novel, drew additional inspiration from the real-life story of Claire Wineland, a CF patient and advocate who died in September 2018, shortly before the film's release. The novel was developed with the involvement of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the medical details — the bacteria, the treatments, the transplant process — are accurate to the experience of CF patients.
Why can't Stella and Will touch in Five Feet Apart?
Patients with cystic fibrosis must maintain a minimum six-foot distance from other CF patients because of the risk of cross-infection. The bacteria that colonize the lungs of CF patients — including dangerous strains like Burkholderia cepacia, which Will carries — are harmless to people with healthy immune systems but can be transferred between CF patients and cause severe, potentially fatal infections in lungs that are already compromised. Will's particular colonization (B. cepacia) makes him ineligible for a lung transplant even if lungs become available. Exposing Stella to it could remove her from the transplant list and shorten her life. The six-foot rule — which Stella and Will reduce to five feet — is not a hospital policy invented for the plot; it reflects real CF care guidelines.
How does Five Feet Apart compare to The Fault in Our Stars?
Both Five Feet Apart and The Fault in Our Stars are YA novels about teenagers who fall in love while facing serious illness, and both deal with grief, limitation, and the question of how much to invest in a life that may be short. The Fault in Our Stars features two cancer patients and was written by John Green; Five Feet Apart features two CF patients and was written by Rachael Lippincott. The primary structural difference is the physical constraint at the center of Five Feet Apart — the rule that the two protagonists cannot touch — which The Fault in Our Stars does not have. Five Feet Apart's Stella is notably more controlling and rule-bound than Green's Hazel Grace, and Will's fatalism is sharper than Augustus's performed acceptance.
What is cystic fibrosis, and is it portrayed accurately in Five Feet Apart?
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition that causes a thick, sticky mucus to build up in the lungs and digestive system, leading to chronic lung infections, difficulty breathing, and progressive lung damage. There is no cure, though treatments have improved dramatically in recent years and median life expectancy for CF patients has increased significantly. The novel's portrayal of CF — the daily treatment regimens, the hospital stays for exacerbations, the transplant process, the cross-infection risk — is generally regarded as accurate by the CF community, and the authors consulted with CF patients and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation during the novel's development. Some CF patients have noted that the novel slightly romanticizes the hospital experience, but its medical specifics are considered reliable.
Is there a Five Feet Apart movie?
Yes. A film adaptation of Five Feet Apart was released in March 2019, directed by Justin Baldoni and starring Haley Lu Richardson as Stella and Cole Sprouse as Will. The film was developed in parallel with the novel — Lippincott novelized a script that existed before the book — and both came out within days of each other. The film grossed approximately $91 million worldwide and was well-received by YA audiences and CF advocacy organizations. Haley Lu Richardson's performance as Stella received particular praise for capturing both the compulsive management of a life around illness and the specific quality of Stella's grief.
What other books are similar to Five Feet Apart?
Readers who respond to Five Feet Apart often also read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (the foundational text of the illness romance subgenre in YA), Nicholas Sparks's A Walk to Remember (terminal illness and love, in an adult register), and Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun (grief, art, and love in a YA context without the medical framework). For readers who want another Rachael Lippincott novel, She Gets the Girl (co-written with Alyson Derrick) is a YA romance with comparable emotional directness. Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before trilogy offers a lighter version of YA romance with the same dual-perspective narration.
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