PopSugar Reading Challenge 2015
Read a Popular Authors First Book
Looking for Alaska by John Green
This is my second John Green book since I read "The Fault in Our Stars" last summer. I loved TFIOS and the movie adaptation. It gave me so many feelings and made me cry uncontrollably. It was not without it's faults but overall I greatly enjoyed it. I honestly wish I could say the same about Looking for Alaska. I went into really hoping to like it, especially since it is one of my best friends favorite books. However, as I was reading it I found so many problems with the characters and the story that I was ultimately not able to enjoy it.
The first problem I came across was the characters. I don't know if Green didn't fully flesh out the characters or what it was but I was simply not able to connect to them. I didn't really like any of the characters and as such I was not invested in what happened to them. I don't have to tell you that it is pretty important to be invested in the story you are reading but I just couldn't get there.
The second problem I had with this book was John Green's pretentious and existentialist writing. Apparently everything in a Green novel must be some kind of crazy metaphor and everything has to have some deeper meaning. For me it just makes the characters seem so unrealistic and lets just say it, pretentious. I mean not everyone walks around all the time talking about life and death. I honestly thought this type of writing was appropriate while reading TFIOS but it is really uncalled for in this book. I have heard from other people though that this is just how Green writes.
Another issue I had with this book was it's predictability. I knew exactly what was going to happen to the main character at the end of the book after I had only read half of it. This is the first time I have ever been able to predict a books ending and I really hope it never happens again. What is the fun in reading a book if you already know the ending?
The last problem I had with this book is that it was boring which in my opinion is the greatest offense a book can make. I found myself several times checking how many pages I had left to finish which is never a good sign.
I know that a lot of people really liked this book but this is just my opinion. I hope that this review doesn't offend anyone.
Have a great day bookworms!
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