Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska

Author: John Green

Publication Date: December 28th, 2006

Publisher: Speak

Genre: YA/Contemporary

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Synopsis:

Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. Then 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 pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. After. Nothing is ever the same.

My Thoughts: This book surprised me emotionally. I went into this completely unprepared for what I was about to experience. I honestly expected another heart torn romance. An unrequited love, a life changing romance. And while it is kind of those things it is also so much more.

This book dares to go there. It dares to take you to the darker places. I feel like it lays so much bare, almost so that you feel exposed. While that may sound confusing, maybe you'll understand once you read it, or if you have read it already. The window we get into these young people's mind is just so clear, so honest and real, and it holds nothing back.

It's  another story about coming of age, about finding real friends, and the real you. We get to go on the journey with a group of teenagers who we might call misfits. They are the branches off the norm, the eccentric. But they boldly accept their titles and wear them with pride. While I felt like they were so much more grown up than I was at their age, I think it comes with what they've experienced and also with being at a boarding school. This made it a little bit harder for me to develop a connection with the characters, but the story was riveting nonetheless.

At the end we are still left with some questions, but the answers seem unattainable as we know from reading the story. It's as if we are suffering along with the characters. In their goal to find the answers no matter what the cost. And again in their acceptance that in the end, not everything is meant to be known and we just have to take what we get and make the best of it.

It's a really great story that I would recommend to just about anyone and it definitely earned it's place among the top 100 YA list.