Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Looking for Alaska

Hm. I think I like John Green's writing better in small doses. This is a very...quotable book? You can pull out plenty of lovely prose and turns of phrase. The problem is pretty much everything in between. The idea of this book was one that I was all on board with. The before and after structure and countdown sections was very well done. However, I didn't particularly care about the characters. For every turn of phrase that I though was well done, there were paragraphs that I rolled my eyes at. It just tried to hard often. I'd have to read more to decide if it was just coincidence or not, but from the few John Green books I've read it seems like the narrators are largely interchangeable? And possibly very strongly self-insert in a boring way. I think this book wanted to critically analyze the problem of the manic-pixie-dream-girl and how people are more complex and have their own narratives and selves that we don't know...but I don't feel like it managed to pull it off.

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zoemorana's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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dlrosebyh's review

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Looking For Alaska follows Miles, an innocent child attending boarding school. No smoking, no alcohol, no sex- at least that's what his parents said. Well, he has been obedient until he met Alaska Young.

Alaska Young is a sixteen-year-old obsessed with sex, and she holds a reputation to be the only girl who hasn't cheated on her boyfriend. She loves him dearly. They're the perfect couple, at least that's what everyone thought.

One night, Alaska went missing. But Miles, or known as Purge, was determined to look for Alaska, to confess his love for her.

This book doesn't necessarily have lovable characters. If you love a character in this book and you don't kin the character, that's pretty questionable. Listen, I love pretentious characters, characters with questionable morals, and sad books. But, this didn't really do this for me.

As said earlier, Alaska is a sex addict- but the thought of a grown man writing sex scenes by teenagers is creepy, don't lie. Alaska was also oversexualized. I know it was supposed to be realistic, but it's just a no for me.

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matchababesandbooks's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Very interesting. This was my second John Green book (the first being The Fault in Our Stars), and I’m not totally sure which one I enjoyed more. I don’t mind John Green’s writing, in fact, I think I like it more than most people, but it’s not my absolute favorite. However, it didn’t take away from the story. The characters were likable but a little irritable, as all teenagers are lmao. I’m a sucker for a good boarding school trope, so I already knew I’d at least like this. And I did. Although, I bought this book and was eager to read it because I read reviews and watched videos of people grouping this in with the likes of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Maybe I’m a little biased because Perks is one of my favorite books, but I wouldn’t say Looking for Alaska is on the same level. I think there could’ve been so much more. I understand that a big plot point in the story is that Pudge nor the reader knows all that much about Alaska, but this makes it very hard for me to connect emotionally with the book.

Spoiler

How am I supposed to be utterly devastated when Alaska dies when I don’t even know her? And in regards to her death, almost all of the “After” section just feels really repetitive. It picked up more toward the end, but that’s because Pudge and the Colonel were finally starting to function normally again. I feel like I’m shitting too much. I really did like the book I swear.

While I was a little underwhelmed, I think it’s just a common thing for a book to be immensely overhyped on social media. But I will say that I giggled a little at most of the jokes cracked in the book, and I haven’t watched the series yet but I’m really excited to!

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