Review: Looking for Alaska

Title: Looking for Alaska

Author: John Green

Publisher: Puffin

Publication Date: March 3rd, 2005

Genre: YA, Realistic Fiction

I first read this book in late December and thought it was pretty good. However, I also thought that it didn’t quite live up to the hype. I was kind of like, “Sure, there’s some pretty quotes, but that doesn’t make it a great book.” Later on, all the love for this book made me doubt my judgement, and I decided to re-read it (when I first saw Pirates of the Caribbean I didn’t like it that much. I saw it again a few months later and thought it was crazy amazing. Since then I always give things another shot and assume that I could be wrong, or could have been in a bad mood and taken it out on the book/movie). I just finished reading it for the second time, and I loved it. A lot. Last time I gave it 4/5, this time I’d say 5/5.

I don’t think I could write a good enough synopsis, and I really like the one from the back of my book:

“Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the “Great Perhaps” (Francois Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She throws Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

After. Nothing is ever the same.”

Overall, Looking for Alaska was heart wrenching, but it was also beautiful and funny at the same time. I think that this book was amazing and that John Green is absolutely brilliant. I feel like no one but him could have possibly written a book like this. There’s a reason his next book was on Amazon’s Top Seller list for six days before it even had a cover. If anyone ever tells you that they hate YA, or that YA is no good, make them read this book. I just finished reading it for the second time, and I’d now say that it’s one of my favourite books, and a must read for anyone.

5/5

“I found myself thinking about William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and toward the end, his wife started crying and screaming, “I want to go, too! I want to go, too!” And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words:  “We are all going.”