Looking for Alaska

Book Review for Looking for Alaska

by Olivia C.

The book that I choose to read for our choice reading was Looking for Alaska by John Green. I feel that stories by Green are typically very similar to one another; the storylines/plots, characters, main ideas, etc. However, I still enjoyed this book and wanted to keep reading it. Sometimes the beginning of books are difficult to keep reading and get through because the first few chapters may be unimportant, or it might not engage you. This novel was not like that, the story started right away and there were not excessive pages of unnecessary details that give the impression that the book is going nowhere. Something that I wish John Green had done differently when writing this book would be the sentence structure. I felt that they way sentences were written got confusing, and I found myself rereading them over and over again.

The the main character is a boy named Miles (also the narrator) who is introverted and shy. He stands back and watches the action-instead of being involved in it, and has a passion for discovering people’s last words. Miles attends Culver Creek Boarding school in Alabama to seek a “Great Perhaps” (5) and meets a group of friends that push him to have more fun, and a girl who he develops strong feelings for. A devastating accident happens that involves a mystery, and throughout the story many clever pranks are played between the students.

I would recommend this book to students, and it was a great book to read for this quarter’s choice reading because it’s the kind of story I would normally pick out for myself outside of school. Reading novels for school can often take away from the writing, and students will dread finishing it in time. This book takes place in current time and addresses topics that interest teens. One of my favorite characters was Alaska because her personality is fun, intelligent, outgoing, and her character never bored me. Alaska’s character was the most mysterious of them all, Miles says “She didn’t leave me enough to discover her, but she left me enough to rediscover the Great Perhaps.” (212). This book is a great read for anyone who favors the typical stories involving drama and love, or action and mystery.