Review: Looking for Alaska

Title:  Looking for Alaska

Author:  John Green

# of pages:  160

Release date:  March 3, 2005

ISBN:  978-0525475064

Rating:  5/5

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 labyrinch 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.

Ok, so full disclosure here.  I really was nervous to read this book.  Of course I had heard everything that’s been said about John Green, about his amazingness and his fantastic talent and ohmygod he is the best writer EVAR, etc.  But when I read An Abundance of Katherines, I didn’t get it.  I mean, I liked the book – I thought it was pretty good and I was definitely entertained.  But I wasn’t wowed.

I decided to give Green another try when I saw Looking for Alaska at the library, just sitting there all lonely on the shelf.  So I took it home, dived in immediately, and OH MY GOODNESS.  I so get it now.  This book is nothing short of fantastic.  The characters are insanely real, refreshingly honest portrayals of teenagers – I so wish I could be friends with these people.  I am several years older than them, yet I would love for them to be real so that I could hang out with them.  The way they interacted with each other, the way their relationships with one another flowed together (and didn’t), it was all so true to life.  And I loved it all.

There were a lot of other things I loved about this novel, but I think the book is best read with as few spoilers as possible – there were some pretty huge events that I wasn’t expecting, and I think it’s much better to not know about them in advance.  So I’m not going to say much else – just read this book.  I really, really freaking loved it and I can’t say so enough.  And while you’re out reading Looking for Alaska, I will be searching for a copy of Paper Towns.

I read this book for Dewey’s Books Challenge – her review is here. 

More reviews –

• Jill at Fizzy Thoughts
• Alessandra at Out of the Blue
• Hope at Hope’s Bookshelf
• Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot
• Jessica at The Bluestocking Society