The book Looking for Alaska is written by John Green who is also the author of The Fault in our Stars. The Fault in our Stars stole many hearts with its tragic love story, but in my opinion Looking for Alaska is even more heartbreakingly beautiful. Looking for Alaska has won many awards and is even taught in schools around the world. My foreign exchanged friend Isabelle read both Looking for Alaska and The Fault in our Stars for school back home in Germany. Although, I should mention that just because this book is read in school does not necessarily mean it is ‘school appropriate.’

This book, broadly stated, is about a boy, called Pudge, who memorizes dead people’s last words and falls in love with a beautifully flawed girl named Alaska. But this is far from your cliché happily ever after love story. Pudge is irrevocably changed by Alaska Young, and if you read this you will be too. This book makes you rethink everything you once thought about life and death and everything in between and you almost can’t help but be impacted by it. One of the themes strung throughout the book is from Simon Bolivar’s supposed last words “how will I ever get out of this labyrinth.” The book argues whether the labyrinth is life or death and the question is constantly where you will go when you die? The book explains people cannot bear thinking that death is end of our existence because the thought of our loved ones not existing quite actually unbearable. The brilliance of John Green in his writing is that he manages to make you think these unthinkable things and can still make you smile and laugh in equal amounts. You can still smile because this book is still about a group of reckless teenagers who do reckless things. All in all this is simply a beautiful story about how humans fall apart and the love that pieces them back together.