Final Opinions

I don’t know if this review gives a formal recommendation about this book, but I will and I’d say that it isn’t my favorite book and in my opinion, I wouldn’t tell my friends to read this book. My biggest pet peeve about this book is the ending. I thought it was very unfulfilling and left a lot of questions unanswered. Even though leaving these questions hanging would be the true “ending” to a real life event, I think books should conclude with all the important questions answered and this book didn’t do that. I know this book has won awards for being well written and everything else technical, but I didn’t really like the story line. I thought it was quite boring after the big event of Alaska’s death. I found Pudge and the Colonel were searching for unanswerable questions for the last half of the book and it never went anywhere, again, at the ending.

I do appreciate that this book was written well. I think if the author didn’t write so well, I wouldn’t have been as intent to get to the end of the book. I like his perspective on things and I agree with the review saying that all the characters were anti-stereotypical and this was quite an interesting view on things. I find when I’m reading a book about kids of school age, the characters are all the same but John Green flipped that all around. When reading his Looking For Alaska, and learned more about a characters way of thinking and personality traits, then you realize they aren’t the person you thought they were. I thought that was very creative and made the story more interesting to read.

Overall, my impression of this book isn’t so great; although it was well written, I couldn’t get over my frustration of the end and the particular monotony the last half of the book held. I’m glad I read it because it allowed me to see my dislikes in literature for the future, but I would never read this book again.

~Amanda