This is John Green's debut novel, published in 2005. It follows the main character Miles Halter, a skinny kid with no social life who leaves Florida public school to attend a prep school in Alabama. He quickly fits in with a group of friends who introduce him to the finer parts of the teenage experience, such as smoking, drinking, and pranking the popular kids. He also finds himself stuck stuck in the friendzone with the wild, moody, and super attractive Alaska Young.
The Good: I don't know what it was about this book, maybe I found too much of myself in the narrator, but I haven't enjoyed a book this much in years. The characters were interesting, and the story had enough conflict, emotion, drama and mystery to keep me interested throughout the entire thing.
The Bad: There are to problems with this book. I suppose the first is more of a problem with the author more than this particular novel. And maybe since this is his first novel, I should forgive him, but the thing about John Green is that he writes the exact same narrator in all of his books. Yes, the narrator in The Fault in our Stars is a girl with cancer obsessed with a pretentious author, and the narrator in Looking for Alaska is a teenage boy obsessed with famous peoples' last word, but in essence, they are the same person. The language his narrators use, and you can include An Abundance of Katherines as well, are identical. It's the snarky teen with a big vocab, and even though I've enjoyed all of his books thus far, I haven't found much variety.
The other problem I had deals with the final third of the book and would contain numerous spoilers, so I won't go into too many details here, other than to say I wish the book would have had ended in a different way. The final third of the book takes a nice, darker turn, but it all seemed a little rushed.
The other problem I had deals with the final third of the book and would contain numerous spoilers, so I won't go into too many details here, other than to say I wish the book would have had ended in a different way. The final third of the book takes a nice, darker turn, but it all seemed a little rushed.
Closing: Overall, I loved it, and give it highest recommendations, especially if you're unfamiliar with John Green or this type of YA novel.
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