Unlike most dramatic novels that make you angry and cry and throw your book against the wall more towards the end of it,  critically acclaimed John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” has the climax right in the middle, separating it into the “Before” and the “After”.  The traumatic event that occurs between the before and after will really make you hate John Green.

The books begins with the main character, Miles departing for the same boarding school that his father attended in high school. Miles is completely bored with his life and is looking for something — anything — new and exciting to revoke the feeling that he’s wasting his teenage years away. He calls this the Great Perhaps. He makes friends with his roommate, Chip, and through him, a gorgeous girl named Alaska. She propels him fast and furiously on his journey to find his Great Perhaps with her own philosophical questions.  And of course, Miles falls completely in love at first sight of this beautiful, wild, intelligent, enigmatic girl.

Chip and Alaska take him on adventures and get him into a little trouble, something he’d never tasted before boarding school. Together, they pull pranks on their enemies at the school and  constantly break the school’s drinking and smoking rules, as most all of the students do there, along with many other school policies. Alongside all of their shenanigans, somehow they all keep perfect grades.

That’s the before.

In the after, everything changes.

It’s irrevocably life-altering.

But to find out what happens, you’ll just have to read the book.