Review: Looking for Alaska

Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Publication Date: December 28th, 2006
Publisher: Speak

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.

"I go to seek a Great Perhaps."

Like a lot of people, my first John Green book was actually The Fault in Our Stars. Needless to say, I fell in love with TFIOS, and a few months later, I discovered John’s youtube channel.

Oh. My. Gosh. John Green is quite possibly the most awesome person ever.

Aside from joining Nerdfighteria, I also became obsessed with reading more John Green awesomeness.

So I went to my local library and got Looking for Alaska, read it, and….

French. The. Llama.

This books is um kinda AMAZING.

I was absolutely floored by the fact that this was a debut novel because it is just so beautifully written and the characters are all magnificently complex and relatable and it just seemed so incredible that someone’s first-ever novel could be SO fantastic. 

John Green has this uncanny ability to make his stories and characters very REAL. Not as in this-happened-in-real-life kind of thing (though this book was inspired by his own time in boarding school) but real as in I could actually see these characters as being people I wish I could meet in real life. These characters are pretty quite quirky, very hilarious, and richly complex with emotional depth. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

All in all: This book is an enjoyable mishmash of humor and craziness, but also darker emotions such as guilt and grief. I had no problem relating to and becoming invested in the characters and I think that this book is a must-read for any YA enthusiast!