Review: Looking For Alaska by John Green

 Title: Looking For Alaska by John Green

Publication: February 28th 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers

Genre: Young-adult fiction

Pages: 272

Format: Paperback

Source: Gift

Buy: Amazon UK / The Book Depository

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Synopsis:

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. 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.

Review: ( May contain spoilers)

I received this book as a Christmas present last year and I couldn't wait to read it. I had read John Green's other books such as 'The Fault in Our Stars','Paper Towns' and 'Will Grayson,Will Grayson'

and I have to say apart from 'Will Grayson,Will Grayson' which I found reading to be a bit confusing, I found all of John's other books to be amazing, I love 'The Fault in Our Stars' and I think the movie compliments the book well, and I found the movie adaptation of 'Paper Towns' to be good also.

I was expecting to really enjoy this book and could not wait to finally pick it up recently, only to find that it was kind of a let down to me....and before you click out of this review, let me explain why.

I like John Green's style of writing its just so out of the ordinary like how did he even think of the Black Santa thing from 'Paper Towns' like seriously! In this book, I see the quirkiness of John Green's writing as I find that only in a John Green book would the main character Miles Halter, have an obsession with knowing peoples famous last words.

This may sound strange but one thing I quite liked about this book was the fact that it was set in a boarding school, Culver Creek. I don't know why but ever since I was younger, when I really started to like reading and became a little bookworm, I was obsessed with books about boarding schools or set in boarding schools.I loved books such as 'The Naughtiest Girl' and 'Malory Towers' by Enid Blyton, I think I just found the idea of boarding school so cool, I never really planned on going myself but I still loved reading about them and I think a part of me still loves books set in boarding schools I just don't know why...

So early on in my blogging life, I don't really know how to write negative reviews but to be honest I found this book to be quite...boring. Nothing really stood out to me the characters were average, the plot was average and overall I just didn't get that feeling I enjoy from books, that feeling when you think " Wow this book is amazing, I have to drop everything to finish it" and that just didn't happen like it happened with other works by John Green.

 By the time I got to the After section of this book it felt like every time I went to read my book it was a chore. I think in some ways I found 'Looking For Alaska' and 'Paper Towns' to be too similar, the main characters both end up searching for the one they love, I know your all probably screaming at your screens right now  "how are they the same Margo was alive and Alaska is dead!", but its just my opinion...

I don't really know what else to say about this book...I didn't love it....but I didn't necessarily hate it either... I am just finding it hard to put into words why I didn't like it, but I can't seem to think of many definite reasons, I just simply didn't enjoy it very much. Sorry this review was not my best work but I decided to post it anyway instead of scraping it as practice makes perfect! The more books I review the better I will get at writing reviews,hopefully. Don't let this review turn you off John Green's books all together I highly recommend 'The Fault in Our Stars' to anyone who has not read it yet.

Rating:

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