Rating – 5/5

Plot – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23359962-looking-for-alaska

Review – There’s a little spoiler in the quotation and the paragraph before (paragraph 2).

This debut novel from John Green (author of The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns) is the best of his novels I’ve read so far – you can’t tell because I gave both The Fault In Our Stars and Looking for Alaska (this one!) five out of five. Perhaps I should amend that.

One of the things I love about John Green’s books is the philosophical element, and this didn’t disappoint. A lot of the book is about the labyrinth of suffering, and Miles and Alaska are constantly exploring it further.

‘It’s not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?’

Also, the driving force behind the plot, and the reason that Miles goes to Culver Creek is Rabelais’ last words ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ Miles doesn’t want to wait until death to seek his Great Perhaps, so he chooses to go to boarding school in search of it instead.

This book was an relatively fast read. I enjoyed it a lot (as you can see by the rating!)

Happy reading!