Review #197: Looking for Alaska- John Green

Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Pages: 221
Rating: 3/5 Stars
Summary: BEFORE. Miles "Pudge" Halter is done with his safe life at home. His 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. 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.

Review: So I have been hearing a lot about John Green and how awesome he is, but honestly, I wasn’t impressed. I really had to push myself to get into this book and to finish it. I couldn’t connect with the characters or the story. Well, if you could even call that a story. I wasn’t really sure what the point of the book was. Basically I found the boys to be big pansies who were controlled by a bitchy teenage girl. Alaska was a “party” girl who thought she was Queen Shit and I guess everyone else did too. She didn’t really think of the consequences to her actions, and in the end it was her undoing. For my sake, I hope John Green’s others books are better because I have a few of them. I would still recommend this book to others just because I don’t want my opinion to affect whether they read it or not.

About this author

John Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel, Paper Towns, is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The praise included rave reviews in Time Magazine and The New York Times, on NPR, and from award-winning author Markus Zusak. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called Will Grayson, Will Grayson, published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of Will Grayson Will Grayson, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios.

In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found on the Nerdfighters website, or a direct link here.