Looking for Alaska by John Green
I know, I know. I am not sure if it is just me, but I found this novel to be very bland. I was excited to pick up this novel because of all the hype, and the setting of a boarding school is not one I have read often. From the very beginning I was able to guess what this great tragedy was going to be, and was not something that I thought would get better (in my opinion).
I gave this novel up after reading a little over half (I got past the “after”), and had still felt no connection to the character. Our main character Miles “Pudge” was an average character, who did not stand out for me at all. Reading his perspective felt like I was reading observations, and that neither him or I had any connection to the story.
I appreciate what message was trying to be sent in this novel, but for me there were too many other distractions to really understand it. After reading this novel I have come to the realization that John Green novels are not for me.
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
This is another novel for which my expectations were very high. I have since heard that this is a novel that you either love or hate, but every review I had heard was very positive.
When I first heard the plot for this novel, it was not very attractive to me. A teenage girl getting together with her now-dead sister’s boyfriend? No thanks. Even after reading 100 pages of this novel, and trying to understand Lennie’s grief, I could not get over her relationships. I found no appeal to either of the love interests, and wish instead that there was more focus on Lennie and her family recovering from the grief - it had been four weeks since the loss of her sister.
Because this novel is on the shorter side I had expected to be attached to the story very quickly, and was disappointed when that did not happen.
Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuhen
This is a novel that I had had on my shelves for quite some time, but had heard nearly nothing about. I know now why this was not as popular as other young adult fiction.
This novel follows a young man who goes to boarding school in New England, because of some family tragedy that happened a couple of years back. I did not read enough of this novel to find out what the tragedy was, nor did I care enough to find out. There were different references to what could have happened, but if the cover and symbolisms are any indication - this guy thought he was a werewolf. I went into this expecting a psychological thriller, but instead I was just confused the entire time, not connected to any of the characters, and bored throughout.
Night Road by A.M Jenkins
This is a novel that I had not heard about before, and was interested in the cover when I saw it sitting in my library. When I started reading this I did not know that it was a vampire story, but was still interested because that is a sub-genre I don’t read very often. Maybe vampire stories are just not for me, because I really did not enjoy this novel.
I read about 100 pages of this 360 page book, and could not push myself any farther. It was told in third-person when I would have preferred first narrative so that we could get deeper into the mind of Cole, whose story we were following. I did not enjoy the way they were describing how the “heme’s” lived, and still never understood what kind of a business they were running. Overall it was a very easy decision for me to stop reading it and return it to the library.
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