Looking For Alaska by John Green

 

Summary:

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A stunning debut, it marks John Green's arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

Summary taken from Goodreads.com

Length: 221 pages

Source: Toronto Public Library

Publication Date: March 3rd 2005

After months of seeing people talking about this, and my blogger friend from reviewingshelf.wordpress.com telling me I HAD to read this book I finally bit the bullet last week and did it.

I really liked the book. Miles and The Colonel were by far my favourite characters. I generally don't read many male authors, I have nothing against them it just seems like the books I'm most drawn to are written by women. However John Green has definitely found a new fan in me.

For 80% of the book I spent my time laughing my butt off because the characters and their conversations remind me so much of myself and my friends when we were in high school, I thought that John Green did an excellent job of portraying the life of a teenage boy in boarding school, because he didn't do what a lot of authors do when the characters are in boarding school which is make them goodie two shoes or just make them the "losers". Instead he had a perfect balance and the book seemed rather realistic.

Now, I know I might just upset some fans of the book but I did not care for Alaska, too much. That was the one and only thing I just didn't like about the book. Unfortunately Alaska just so happens to be A) the girl the book is entitled after and B) one of the main characters. I just thought that Green made a mistake with her character it seems as if  he tried to hard to make her this wild child and it came off to me anyways as very fake.

Overall though I think this was a well rounded book and the last 20% of the novel could have been a wee bit shorter and I was a little surprised at the big event that happened (If you want to know what it is then read the book!) but I think it made the book better because it made it a little more serious. I love a good light hearted book and this one for the majority of the time was one but I'm glad he included that big event. It worked with the book.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone. Young or old but, I think that the majority of the fans will be YA lovers specifically YA lovers who read realistic YA fiction. I'll be checking into reading more of John Green's books in the near future.

Have you read this book? If you have, what did you think? No SPOILERS please :)

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★ ★ ★ ★