022--Book Review Friday

Today (or rather, so early into the morning that it can hardly be considered Friday), I will be reviewing John Green's Looking for Alaska.  The book won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature (and for the record, I just said "literature" as a Brit would).

I know a lot of people who have read this book, including one of my best friends, who have thoroughly enjoyed it; and I will admit that I feel the same way.  I typically struggle reading novels in which the main character is male because I identify more closely with characters of my own gender.  However, I was able to connect with Pudge in the fact that he's generally sort of quiet and all around fairly normal.  A lot of characters in young adult fiction tend to have these deep (or, in some cases, not-so-deep) backstories with interpersonal issues, but Pudge is sort of mundanely average, and I am very much the same way.

I am now realizing it is very difficult to review a book without giving away anything too monumental, but I can say this: from the beginning of the novel, there is a sense of foreboding.  Every chapter begins with the heading of how many days until "it" happens.  This is unfortunately the only way to explain it without giving away the end of the novel.  When "it" finally happens, at the very climax of the novel, all there's left to do is figure out why "it" happened in the first place.  The most interesting part of the novel, I believe, is that once it happened, I expected the whole novel to just sort of come to a close, but it was really just the beginning of the big picture of the entire novel.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the novel wasn't anything like I expected it to be, and I guess that's what I really loved about it.

I rate this book a 9.8 out of 10.  The only reason I didn't give it a 10 is because I don't give 10's.

If you would like to purchase Looking for Alaska, here is a link:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/looking-for-alaska-john-green/1100255278?ean=9780142402511&itm=1&usri=looking%2bfor%2balaska