Reviews

Looking for Alaska by John Green

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ponch22's review against another edition

3.0

While it may look like it took me six weeks to read this, I actually had to put it down for three weeks after my loan for The Cabin at the End of the World became available, so it really only took me three. But that still feels a little long for a John Green YA novel... However, I am watching more movies than I have in years, and I'm still in a bit of a reading slump where I rarely feel like reading for more than 10-20 minutes a night (and not even every night).

Looking for Alaska, Green's first novel, was actually the last of his (solo) works I hadn't read yet. I still have Let it Snow and Will Grayson, Will Grayson which he cowrote with others to (maybe) read one day. It all started back in 2013, when I read and loved The Fault in Our Stars. I've been a casual fan of John and his brother Hank Green for years, listening to their podcasts, watching their videos, and reading most of their books. But most of John's other work hasn't really hit quite as well as that first one (although his non-fiction The Anthropocene Reviewed was another 5* book).

Looking for Alaska has an interesting hook, titling the first chapter "one hundred thirty-six days before" and proceeding to count down chapter by chapter to an eventual turning point when chapters start counting the number of days after...something. It's funny reading this knowing John grew up in Florida, went to a boarding school in Alabama, has a bunch of famous people's final words memorized, and otherwise basically was the main character. Had I read this back in 2005 (or even 2013), I probably never would have seen so much of John in the protagonist, Pudge.

But as it was, I kept reading this as a semi-autobiographical debut novel and I kept hearing John's voice during key moments of Pudge's story.

It probably doesn't help that nerdy-guy-fawning-over-hot-girl feels overplayed (maybe because I've read every other John Green novel already), as does the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope Alaska fits into (not to mention

the fridging trope

).

The whole second half feels like a tease, setting up a whole

accident/suicide

mystery but failing to solve it. I enjoyed the way the characters talked with one another, and the ideas behind most of the school pranks were fun, but in the end it was another 3 weeks I wish I had back to read something that really drew me in and surprised/delighted me instead of just something average I've been putting off for a decade before finally reading.