Looking for Alaska by John Green

Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Publisher: Speak
Release date: December 28th 2006

Rating: 5/5

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Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A stunning debut, it marks John Green's arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

Miles Halter is a 16 year old boy he´s in high school and he doesn´t have many friends, so he decides to enroll into the Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama after reading the last words of the poet Rabelais so off he goes in search of his "Great Perhaps". There he meets and befriends with Chip Martin aka "The Colonel", Alaska Young, Takumi and Lara.

Looking for Alaska is seen from the point of view of Miles aka "Pudge", he´s an intelligent young man who likes to read biographies of famous people and knows by heart the last words of such persons. Chip aka "Colonel" is very smart, funny and becomes a very good friend of Miles and he´s the mastermind behind the antics that the group performs and also Miles´s roommate. Alaska Young is a smart girl, witty, funny but with a dark side and a very changeable mood. Takumi and Lara are some characters that we get to know less but very likeable and they´re part of the gang.

This book covers about one school year in the life of Miles and you can see how he's changing and growing through the story. Looking for Alaska is divided into two parts the before and the after an event that comes to change Miles´s world and himself.

I decided to read this book as part of a read-along and the truth is that I didn´t know what to expected about it because the synopsis is not very informative but wow this book is really good, this is the first book I have read a book of John Green and it will not be the last.

Looking for Alaska is a contemporary novel, the story is fresh, funny, with sad parts and really unexpected. I highly recommended this book. I LOVE IT!

Favorite quote:

When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.