Book Review: Looking for Alaska - John Green

Synopsis: 

In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla and on that thin-mooned night I could see little more than her silhouette, but even in the dark, I could see her eyes - fierce emeralds. And not just beautiful, but hot too. 

When Miles Halter leaves for boarding school, he goes to seek what dying poet Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps". Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, self destructive and dead sexy, Alaska pulls Miles into her labyrinth, catapulting him into an unimaginable future...

Review:

While writing my review on ‘Paper Towns’ by John Green, I realized that I hadn’t written a review on another book of his, ‘Looking for Alaska.’ I picked up this novel after I had read ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ and was automatically obsessed over John Green’s works. This novel has a huge twist, so I won’t write too much of the plot!

‘Looking for Alaska’ is about a young man named Miles Halter who is also known as ‘Pudge.’ He goes from living with his parents, not having many friends and spending his time reading about famous last words to going to a boarding school in rural Alabama. It is here where he meets a collection of unique companions one of which is ‘The Colonel,’ his roommate, who is somewhat senseless and of course Alaska Young herself, “the hottest girl in all human history.”

During Miles’ time at Culver Creek boarding school, apart from the overload of academic expectations, he encounters a few adventures such as smoking, drinking and the schools tradition of playing pranks while skillfully avoiding the consequences received by Culver Creek’s school principle, ‘The Eagle.’ These practices are eye opening experiences for Miles compared to his perfect, ordinary lifestyle beforehand, however, throughout his entire time Alaska is defiantly the center of his universe. Alaska could easily be described as one who is the complete opposite to Miles but her seemingly non- ending personality lead Miles into a labyrinth of emotions.

The wonderful Green as once again (unsurprisingly) crafted another extraordinary novel that carries the audience into a rollercoaster of emotions. ‘Looking for Alaska’ is hilarious while also being drastically depressing and to be able to do that successfully is a high achievement. I would highly recommend this novel and will treasure it for a long time to come.

Thank you for reading,

Ally xox