I read it in 7th grade on a class trip to Washington DC and loved it. This was one of teenage Caroline’s favorite books.

She likely crashed the car on purpose to kill herself. Alaska blamed herself for her mother’s death and believed she had messed up again by forgetting it. She tore out of the dorm with flowers apparently heading for her mother’s grave.

While talking to him, Alaska realized that she had forgotten the anniversary of her mother’s death. The call Alaska got was from her boyfriend, as he always calls her at 3:02 am on the exact time of their anniversary.

Miles and Chip launch themselves into searching for answers as to why she died as they grieve her. In the middle of the night, Alaska got a call and then ran out of the room crying. They were all drinking together, and fell asleep in her dorm room. Miles and Chip were with Alaska the night she died. (Mar.Alaska dies in a car crash midway through the book and Miles’ heart is broken. Readers will only hope that this is not the last word from this promising new author. But the novel's chief appeal lies in Miles's well-articulated lust and his initial excitement about being on his own for the first time.

Theological questions from their religion class add some introspective gloss. After Alaska drives drunk and plows into a police car, Miles and the Colonel puzzle over whether or not she killed herself. Green replaces conventional chapter headings with a foreboding countdown-'ninety-eight days before,' 'fifty days before'-and Alaska foreshadows her own death twice ('I may die young,' she says, 'but at least I'll die smart'). Readers may pick up on clues that she is also doomed. Other than her occasional hollow, feminist diatribes, Alaska is mostly male fantasy-a curvy babe who loves sex and can drink guys under the table. When he chucks his boring existence in Florida to begin this chronicle of his first year at an Alabama boarding school, he recalls the poet Rabelais on his deathbed who said, 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' Miles's roommate, the 'Colonel,' has an interest in drinking and elaborate pranks-pursuits shared by his best friend, Alaska, a bookworm who is also 'the hottest girl in all of human history.' Alaska has a boyfriend at Vanderbilt, but Miles falls in love with her anyway. This ambitious first novel introduces 16-year-old Miles Halter, whose hobby is memorizing famous people's last words.

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