Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska by John Green

“Looking for Alaska” is without a doubt my favourite book by John Green. I love how different this is from his typical work (even though “Looking for Alaska” is his first novel). It feels more personal, more relateable and more real.

The characters are well developed and I love Alaska! I love how dimensional she is and how the reader and other characters never really get to know who she is. Even by the end of the novel there’s that question about who Alaska really was. It felt very much like “Paper Towns” where Q (and the reader) try to discover who Margo is. While we do get some insight on who Margo is, we never know who Alaska is. And I think that’s what makes the book great, this forever questioning of who she was. It works with the question John Green seems to put in his writing: How do we know who we truly are and who other people are? It makes readers realize that we don’t know ourselves or others no matter how much we think we do, so it’s important to take the time to get to know the person.

Also while reading I discovered that the line “I love you present tense” is found in both “Looking for Alaska” and “The Fault in Our Stars”.

They do differ slightly though. In “Looking for Alaska” the line is something like, “But I did love her, present tense.” While in “The Fault in Our Stars” it’s simply “I love you present tense.”

~ Sarah