BookShelf: Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

~Taken from Goodreads

I've read the Fault In Our Stars and I found it pretty unique (but not as awesome or tear jerking as everyone was hyping about) so I decided to try out another book by John Green. Let me just say that I have never been to university (or college or whatever it is called) or lived alone, away from my parents- and the book was describing everything in so much amazing detail so I was obviously hooked (it was like a Harry Potter fan reading a fanfic about a normal student at Hogwarts while Harry does his awesome stuff etc xD for me anyway). Everything was described- the euphoria of a "Great Perhaps" and leaving home, making new friends, studying, ragging (it's called pranking there, apparently), getting into trouble, trying not to get into trouble and I just soaked up the details with shiny sparkly eyes LOL

But okay, back to the point. The book dealt with the death of a close friend and how such an event could be so sudden and unpredictable and have such long lasting effects. I found some of the characters hard to imagine (Alaska was one of these people. She was just... too eccentric that she seemed more like a cardboard character where you just lump everything labelled "crazy" with her but she was still cool).

Anyway, I rather enjoyed reading this book and would most certainly recommend it to anyone who has read TFIOS and liked it. But the thing is, the characters are just as unrealistic as they were in TFIOS (cough) Augustus Waters (cough). It's great for light reading though- don't dwell too much on what's going on and go with the flow :D