Looking For Alaska

Warning: Spoilers (For the book, not the series)

Looking for Alaska was published in March 2005 and is John Green's first novel ever.

The Hulu series aired in October of 2019 and I am so disappointed in myself for not having seen it yet.

The novel centers around Miles Halter as he is sent to a boarding school in Alabama and has to learn to use small talk to impress his new peers and appear cool. He first meets Chip Martin who is his room mate and can name most countries in the world as his talent.

He then meets Alaska Young and is instantly dazzled by her but let me tell you, this is no ordinary love story.

Alaska, Chip, Takumi and Miles form one of the lower cool groups of the school and proceed to engage in a prank war with the Weekday Warriors, rich kids who think they're all that, through all their adventures Miles reveals that his talent is knowing peoples last words. His favorite being those of Francois Rabelais "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." and he and Alaska bond over her favorite quote by Simon Boliver: "Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

The book is a beautiful look at first loves and awkward teens just wishing to be cool in the most rebellious ways. I cannot believe that this is Green's first book because it is beautifully written and it really makes you think.

The most thought provoking quote in this book is the one that Alaska answers about the labyrinth. She proposes that we spend our whole lives stuck inside of the labyrinth thinking that we will one day escape but we never do, we just use the future to escape the present and later on in the book she says that Boliver wasn't talking about the living or the dying of the labyrinth, he was talking about the suffering.

The only good advice I can give anyone about this book when reading it is not to skip ahead and for the love of everything good in this world, do not trust the count down!

Regardless of that, I absolutely loved this book and everything in it and I'd like to share a quote that John Green has said about it. He said that when he writes, he doesn't do it to sell a million copies or make a lot of money, he wrote something that matters to those who find it, and I think that's beautiful.

Thanks for reading xx