Looking For Alaska by John Green



Looking for Alaska
by John Green
Release Date: March 3rd, 2005
Publisher: Puffin
Pages: 392


Synopsis:
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps

Review:
This is a very dark and deep book with a lot of great moments. You get to know Miles and how he goes from a shy boy whom did everything his mom told him, to a smoking, drinking teenager that developes a lot in this book. Miles is seeking the Great perhaps and by changing school and living life he finds it within himself, with a little help from his friends that is very smart and mature teenagers. The decisions they took came across as very geniun.
I thought The Colonel (who is Miles roomate) was hillarious and Alaska Young was really trying to get out of the labytinth but did not really know how and her past has made her a bit troubled but oh how lovely she is and so funny!
She teaches Miles about everything a teenage boy does and i thought that was a great trio of friends.

I must say that the way the kids at the school had this policy of not rating anybody out was never going to last but even those that hated one a nother keept their mouths shut so that nobody would get into trouble. The pranks that they did was hillarious and a really enjoyed the first part.
The second part was after a sertained event that made me cry and the book became really dark and sad but very deep and profound at the same time. they start to realise things about themselves that made them become better person.
I thought that the way John Green divided the book was very inventfull and i have never read a book that was the in the same way. It is divided into to parts, the before and after. The first heading is "fift days before" and so you know that all this time it has been built up to something major that is going to happen.

In conclusion:
John Green is an amazing author and he is a master at handeling big quuestions without them ever making my head all mushy. This book will give you a few good laughs but also a lot of sad times and its a captivating book that you do not want to put away, not even to go to the bathroom.

By midnight, A ravenwood mystery by Mia James

Release date: July, 15 2010
Publisher: Gollanzc and Orion Books
Age Group: Young Adults
Pages: 436

The Synopsis:
April Dunne is not impressed. She's had to move from Edinburgh to Highgate, London, with her parents. She's left her friends - and her entire life - behind. She has to start at a new school and, worst of all, now she's stuck in a creepy old dump of a house which doesn't even have proper mobile phone reception. Ravenwood, her new school, is a prestigious academy for gifted (financially or academically) students - and the only place her parents could find her a place, in the middle of term, in the middle of London, on incredibly short notice. So she's stuck with the super-rich, and the super-smart . . . and trying to fit in is when the rest of the students seem to be more glamorous, smarter, or more talented than she is, is more than tough. It's intimidating and isolating, even when she finds a friend in the conspiracy-theorist Caro Jackson - and perhaps finds something more than friendship in the gorgeous, mysterious Gabriel Swift. But there's more going on at Ravenwood than meets the eye. Practical jokes on new students are normal, but when Gabriel saves her from . . . something . . . . in the Highgate Cemetery, and then she discovers that a murder took place, just yards away from where she had been standing, April has to wonder if something more sinister is going on. . . . and whether or not she's going to live through it . .

Mia James is a pseudonym used by Tasmina Perry and John Perry. By midnight is the first book in the ravenwood mystery series.

Thoughts:
At first i thought it was going to be like the twilight book where i girl transfers to another school and she meets a boy who it turns out is a vampire and its about forbidden love and all that. And it is true it has a lot of similarities to twilight and other vampire books and that kind of sucks whe have her the girl who transfers and is like the magnet for vampires! But when i read it the book i realised that it had a lot of things that where different too. It was more of a solving the mysteries that happens in the town she lives in and the love story is kind of in the background.

Hosestly the main charachter April was a little bit dull and i did not get to know her as well as i would have liked. She is really a true friend to those who is near her but at the same time i thought she was really week considering what had happend and a lot of the time really selfish.
As for Gabriel sure i could picture him as the handsome badboy but yet nice when you get to know him and i really would like to feel his strong arms around me! Gabriel and April was always in the between of being a couple and being to strangers with a lot of drama between them.
Caro was one of my favorites, i liked her way of looking at things and her crazy conspiracy theories (that turns out that they are not just storys). The way she acted towards the more popular girls in the school, i like when people stand up to them self and dont let anyone pull dem down.
One thing that really has to be said about the characters and their relasionship is the bond between April and her dad, this bond seems so strong and so deep and i wish that i could connect with my dad on that same level of understanding.
I loved how Mia stayed true to the fact that they are just kids and typical teenagers in the relationships between the characters but also in what they did with the popular kids vs the not so popular, the partys and the drinking. i could definitley see all of those thing happening when teenagers come togheter.

April is so determind to know the truth about what has happend and we are following her as she unravels the mystery of what happend and who the murderer is. She is as stubborn as a 16 year old girl is and thinks that she is alway right and nothing can get her to change her mind. She knows that there are dangers on Ravenwood but yet she feels the need to continue in the search of the mystery behind the school because there is a lot of things with the school that nobody knows, for example nobody knows who is the main guy behind the school, who founded it and who owns it and is this all related to the murders that is going on in the town??

In conclusion:
What i really did not like was the simularities to other vampire books especially twilight, in a lot of ways it was the same!
This is a very good read and really keeps you interested in continuing the book and to find out what happens next becasue thats something that you really dont know and i prommise you that you will be suprised! you keep guessing but you never fully understand until the end.
Mia James has manage to create a story with mystery, romance, anger and fear with twists and turns I truely didn't see coming.
In the end of the book we are left with a cliffhanger and im so excited to find out what will happen next!

I will give this book 4 stars out of 5! This is a must read book!

Getting started

Welcome to my new blog!
My name is Petra and im from Sweden, Europe.
Here i will be reviewing books, sharing my favorit books of all time and much more.
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