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Looking for Alaska
by: John Green
5/5 stars
Overview:
Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's adolescence has been one long nonevent - no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends. Seeking what Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps," he leaves Florida for a boarding school in Birmingham, AL. His roommate, Chip, is a dirt-poor genius scholarship student with a Napoleon complex who lives to one-up the school's rich preppies. Chip's best friend is Alaska Young, with whom Miles and every other male in her orbit falls instantly in love. She is literate, articulate, and beautiful, and she exhibits a reckless combination of adventurous and self-destructive behavior. She and Chip teach Miles to drink, smoke, and plot elaborate pranks. Alaska's story unfolds in all-night bull sessions, and the depth of her unhappiness becomes obvious.
My Review:
I loved this book. There are few books I can say this about, but this is one of them. The reason I first purchased this book was because I had heard wonderful things about it. So grabbing one from the B&N bookshelf was no hard task. Although I am not too fond of male main characters, Miles (or Pudge whichever you prefer), stuck to me. He was hilarious and awkward in a good way. In the beginning of the book I questioned its quality, sure I had heard good things about the story line, but nothing amazing had surfaced yet. That was until I met Alaska. I can say now, and from this day forth that the character Alaska has to probably be one the most interesting characters I have had a chance to read. I loved her so much! I can say she is probably my favorite character of any novel I have read. She was funny, mysterious, witty, and overall she seemed to be a fun person. I was also fascinated the way Green went about writing the novel, with the BEFORE and AFTER. I was very confused at first about what it meant, but I paced myself to not look it up on the internet and just read. In doing so I was shocked, angry, and sad at the reason behind the format. But it was also done beautifully and I cant see him going about creating the book any other way. This novel was haunting and beautiful in all the right ways. It made me want to cry, laugh, and applaud. This book is a must read! Although if your under the age of 14 I would take precaution in reading this book due to some sexual themes in the novel. Other than that, go, read read read, I'm sure you'll find it just as captivating as I found it was.
