Looking for Alaska.

I’m just putting it out there – I love John Green. He is amazing, wonderful, talented and the way that his words resonate within your mind is magical. A few months ago I had my first taste of his writing, The Fault in Our Stars, and was captivated by the story and the way the words and their meanings pulled on every single one of my heart strings. Then I finished the book, I felt lost and was trying to find a book to match or surpass his writing, I felt like my relationship with John, I will call him John because I feel like his writing has broken down barriers between “us” and therefore we are friends, was by no means ready to be executed. So in my state of a TFIOS hangover I found another gem.

Ah, ‘Looking for Alaska’, you certainly did not disappoint. Although TFIOS will always be my favourite of his, Looking for Alaska supplemented my need and was very sufficient in doing so. The friendships, the fall-outs, the fun, the despair. Looking for Alaska had everything I was looking for. So much so I finished the book within a matter of days. Although my craving for John had been temporarily satisfied, upon finishing the book I felt the pang of emptiness return.

John Green has a way of transporting you in to the world of the character, as every author should do. But there’s something more with his writing, something captivating and yet soul destroying in equal measures. It fills you with empathy and love, yet still manages to leave you feeling empty at the end.

It’s an odd thing when you are engrossed in a book, and with how when you finish it you are left feeling a little more contented with your own life and often the lack of shit you have thrown at you, and on the other hand how you feel distraught that you don’t know what happens next. You don’t know if they live or die, are happy or sad, stay in love or fall out of it. But in the same breath, I guess that’s what makes reading so captivating – you can make believe what happens.