Review: Looking For Alaska by John Green

Title: Looking For Alaska

Author: John Green

Published: 28 February 2013
Publisher: Harper Collins
Source: Part of John Green Collectors Edition set from Kmart
Reviewed: Sapphired Dragon
Rating: ***** 

My Review:

Looking For Alaska was my first foray into the writing of John Green and what a successful foray it was. With his other books, The Fault in our Stars and Paper Towns being made into movies, it is all about John Green at the moment but it was his debut novel "Looking for Alaska", whose blurb called to me, that be the first one I would read.

In short I loved it.

Being in boarding school and really high school in general can feel like one's own little world where nothing really exists or matters outside of it. That is the kind of spell that Green casts with this book. He created this little world and what mattered happened inside it not out. It literally cast a spell on me whilst I read it where all that mattered were the characters and the story until I reached the end and then I felt bereft I had to leave.

I like the way the story is structured into before and after as I spent the whole first half of the story wondering "before what?" and then after... well let's just say this structure makes perfect sense with the story.

I loved the feelings and emotions this book evoked from me. I truly felt connected to the book and the characters as I read it and Green's writing style combined with the story itself just seemed like perfection.

I think what I loved most about this book though were the characters. The characters in this story are so real and vivid and I could clearly see them in my minds eye as I read this novel. They had a kind of...I want to say quirkiness but that doesn't really adequately describe them - more like a uniqueness to them that made them really jump of the page and capture my attention and emotions.

Lastly, as superficial as this might sound, I love this cover and I love this particular edition and collection. I love the feel of the hard cover and the prettiness of it. It just added to my reading experience.

If you want a book that will capture your heart and make you feel and laugh and cry, then this is the one.

Trust me, I will be reading a lot more John Green in the future.

I give this book 5 stars

Sapphired Dragon xx

About The Book:

Looking For Alaska by John Green

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Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's 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. Then 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.