Looking For Alaska
Realistic Fiction
By John Green
Reviewed by Kaya Luciani
Rated 6 out of 5
Everything changes for Miles Halter the day he meets Alaska young. With nothing but his few belongings from home and the ability to memorize people’s last words, Miles, or “Pudge,” sets off to Culver Creek Boarding School, located in the so-hot-it’s-exhausting state of Alabama. It takes him a moment to look past her bodacious figure and realize that everything about Alaska is extraordinary. For so long Miles has been searching for his “Great Perhaps,” patiently waiting for something to happen to his life, and it’s possible that this girl could be the answer to his prayers. She is not only able to teach him and their close friends how to understand the confusing subject of calculus, but also she makes him encounter emotions he never knew he had, helps him do things he didn’t know he had the guts to do, and most of all, she shows him that his life can be new and exciting all the time. Everyday miles gets close and closer to realizing the fact that Alaska is more than a friend to him and is wondering if love and/or lust is between them. Then, without any known rhyme or reason, or a lick of warning, Pudge’s “everything “ just slips away, leaving him with and endless list of excruciatingly painful, unanswerable questions, and once again, a missing Great Perhaps. His frustration is close to boiling over. How will he get out of this labyrinth?
This book, and I say this with no exaggeration, was the best book I’ve ever read. It was extremely powerful, filled with emotion, and easily relatable. I recommend this to every young adult who isn’t afraid of crying, laughing, yelling, or even just plain smiling while reading. Green made each character so different from the other, it was hard not to love them all, but Alaska, she was so unique and impossibly inspirational. Even though she is only a character from a book, I found myself looking up to her as if she were real. One of my favorite parts was the ending. What made it so good was how incredibly hard it was to wrap my head around and how it left me questioning ‘til this day. It was one of the few books I’ve read where I felt like I could start reading it again the second I finished, and I strongly believe that you will feel the same way when you read Looking for Alaska.
