Looking For Alaska Book Review

Looking for Alaska is a young adult novel, written by John Green about an emotionally unstable, teenage girl named Alaska Young. It is told from the perspective of high school junior Miles Halter, also known as Pudge by his friends. Miles or Pudge is a new student at Culver Creek Preparatory High School in Alabama. The novel follows Pudge, who does not receive a very warm welcome to the school, Alaska and their friends Chip also known as The Colonel and Takumi, through their junior year of high school. On Miles’ first night at Culver Creek he is thrown into a lake as a prank performed by the Weekday Warriors, a group of rich students at Culver Creek. Therefore, it is the group of friends' goal throughout the novel to out-prank the Weekday Warriors to get them back for their cruel prank on the new kid. Throughout the story John Green gives a bit of background on the character’s past and explains events or experiences that may affect the way the characters are in current time, such as when the whole group of friends get drunk and play a game of “Best and Worst Days”. As the book progresses Alaska becomes more unhappy with her life and sometimes a little moody. Small events pertaining to her attitude eventually lead up to a reckless incident, leaving Alaska dead and her friends in a state of depression. After Alaska Young's death Pudge spends most of his time in mourning until the Colonel decides they need to solve the mystery of Alaska's death. Was it suicide? The quick and fast way out? Or was it really all an accident? While trying to figure out what really happened Pudge, The Colonel and Takumi decide to have one final prank in honor of Alaska, which was respectably the best prank of all time in Culver Creek's history of pranks according to the book.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Overall I thought this book was really good and left me a bit awestruck. It had a great plot, diverse and amazing characters, and a fantastic ending. Although this book was sad and had me in tears the storyline and charcters were very easy to connect with. They felt very real and had opinions and emotions that were relatable and understandable. It really felt as if each character had their own personality and were not just characters. Green did a very good job of making these characters their own person rather than them all sounding and acting as if they were created by the same author. Green also includes details that help make the story more realistic and interesting. The emotions that the characters have make the book more enjoyable and help to make it feel like something I personally could connect with more. The setting also helps make the scene and story easier to imagine and visualize in your mind.

To conclude, this book was fantastic and if you have not read it, I definitely recommend reading it. It is a beautiful piece of literature that I would gladly read multiple times, and usually when I can read a book more than once, it's a pretty good book... Well at least in my opinion! If you would like to see a larger summary and description of this book and the author you can check out Wikipedia's page!

-Ariel