Looking for Alaska 

By John Green

Blurb: 
Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy 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. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . . 
After. Nothing is ever the same.

Review: 
This book is a first person perspective of Miles, who is looking for what he calls his ‘great perhaps’ by going to a boarding school. The book is split into two parts, before and after. Each chapter starts with a countdown to before the event or how many days it has passed after the event. I do like the layout of the book, definitely something new and it gets you ready for something to happen. The event as you can probably guess from the title has something to do with a girl called Alaska, but more will be said in the spoilers section of the review.

I know by being 20 technically I’m no longer an official teenager but I feel like I can speak of what teenagers sound like. In some scenes the characters do sound like they’re having normal young conversations but I’d say for the most part they sound obnoxious and forced humour. 

A thing I really didn’t like in this book was the high use of smoking. It wasn’t really needed for the plot and to me it just felt glorified. The only time it didn’t was when Alaska joked that she smokes to die. But for the most part they’re just having a great time heavily smoking away, it’s just not a good message.

This leads me onto the characters. You have Miles, Colonel, Alaska, Takumi and Lara as the main characters. I don’t think there is a single character I liked. They were all obnoxious, rude and so angry. I’m use to stories where I read about heroes or the characters had such a hard backstory that you can let them be a bit mean and still enjoy them. But these characters just didn’t have anything to them, they barely had depth or character development. They and the book was just simply boring. 

I did however enjoy the scene where they play a game called best day/worst day. This finally gave us some much needed character development well for some of the characters. Mile’s just seems to be the most boring of all the characters.

Another thing I did like about the books was the famous last words quotes. Miles was known for remembering and liking people’s famous last words and would often state them. I just liked this because I appreciate some good funny facts and it felt fitting in the book, something different. 

I also don’t have anything bad to say about the writing style, I feel like it was well written and I enjoyed how for Lara’s dialect that John Green spelt the words as if she was saying them with her accent. 

However, overall it was simply a boring book, I couldn’t even think of many scenes to discuss in the spoilers section.

*SPOILERS*

Some scenes that I did fairly like was Miles and Lara date. On this date, they attended a basketball match and Miles got hit on the head with a basketball. This caused him to have concussion which he repeatedly tried to tell Lara and Takumi and then ended up throwing up on Lara. This felt like a typical teenage scenario, so I liked it. 

The event that I discussed above started with a drunken game of truth or dare which led Miles to makeout with Alaska and both currently in other relationships. Then they fall asleep and Alaska wakes up because of a phone call then comes back screaming that she needs to get off campus. Miles and Colonel agreed to help her. She then drives away drunk, ends up in a car accident and then dies. Alaska isn’t lost, she’s dead and in the after chapters the boys try to figure out how it happened and if it was suicide. 

I think I was hoping for a good adventure of trying to find Alaska but all I got was nothing. Nothing at all. The only thing in this book is that it has a good message about death and how to overcome it. 

Overall, a boring book covered in lovely quotes and messages. Therefore I’m giving it 1.5 stars to be generous. 

Quote: 

“Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.” 

- Alaska Young, Looking for Alaska

Rating: 1.5 runes out of 5

written by Lauren