Looking for Alaska Book Review

Looking for Alaska
John Green
256 pages

Synopsis: Miles “Pudge” Halter is abandoning his safe-okay, boring-life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives are everything but safe and boring. Their nucleus is razor-sharp, sexy, and self-destructive Alaska, who has perfected the arts of pranking and evading school rules. Pudge falls impossibly in love. When tragedy strikes the close knit group, it is only in coming face-to-face with death that Pudge discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally.

I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars because it is fantabolous!

I will admit that I only picked up this book because it was small and not too many pages. I have heard John Green praised sung upon high and I thought, yeah right. I read the synopsis and it did not impress me. How can this story be interesting? I am about to eat my words.

This book is wonderful and magical. We all know a Pudge or maybe some of us were Pudge in high school. Pudge comes to bording school with no friends just looking for something, anything. He quickly makes friends with his roommate, the Colonel, who introduces him to the brillant and destructive Alaska Young.

Pudge is obsessed with peoples last words that sometimes he forgets what is going on around him. This book is sometimes awkard and somethimes painful to read. The angst of teenage sexuality and how to handle the loss of people you love.

I only wish that I read this book a little slower the first time. I was in such a hurry to see what happened. This is a skinny book but in no way a light read. Slow down and savor the journey that John Green takes you on. I will now have to get all of his books since he has lived up to his hype.