Books like Looking for Alaska
What should you read after John Green’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- John Green
- YA coming-of-age
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Looking for Alaska
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
Another watchful boy adopted by louder, damaged friends who teach him how to be a person. It has the same tenderness and the same late reveal that recontextualises everything.
- Grief and blame
- Boarding-school friendship
- Before-and-after structure
- Public school, not boarding
Great matchThe Fault in Our Stars
John Green
Green again, with the same clever, over-articulate teenagers and the same insistence that the big questions deserve an answer. You know roughly what it will do to you.
- Teenagers talking like philosophers
- Grief and blame
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Illness rather than accident
Great matchEleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell
Two misfits on a school bus, one of them carrying a home life she won't discuss. Rowell writes first love with less philosophy and more precision than Green.
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Boarding-school friendship
- Domestic abuse subplot
Great matchIt's Kind of a Funny Story
Ned Vizzini
A funny, self-aware boy who checks himself into a psychiatric ward and finds a temporary family there. Same voice register, gentler outcome.
- Teenagers talking like philosophers
- Boarding-school friendship
- Hospital, not school
Best for the girl who stays unknowableAll the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven
The mirror image: here the unreachable one narrates half the book, so you watch the decline you were kept outside of in Alaska. Prepare accordingly.
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Grief and blame
- Before-and-after structure
- Far more explicit about suicide
Great matchPaper Towns
John Green
Green interrogating his own trope: a boy obsessed with an unknowable girl who turns out to be a person rather than a puzzle. Reads like an answer to Alaska.
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Teenagers talking like philosophers
- Grief and blame
- Comic, much lighter
Great matchWe Were Liars
E. Lockhart
Rich kids, an island summer and a narrator whose memory of the central event has a hole in it. The before-and-after structure, tightened to a wire.
- Before-and-after structure
- Grief and blame
- Stylised, clipped prose
Great matchBefore I Fall
Lauren Oliver
A popular girl relives the day she died until she works out what she owes everyone. It answers the question Miles keeps asking, from the other side.
- Grief and blame
- Before-and-after structure
- Built on a time loop
Great matchThe Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
The boarding-school boy whose voice every narrator here descends from, grieving a brother he barely mentions. Older, angrier, and still the benchmark.
- Boarding-school friendship
- Grief and blame
- Teenagers talking like philosophers
- No plot to speak of
Worth a look — with a warningThirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher
A boy piecing together why a girl he loved died, from material she left behind. The structure matches Alaska closely; the ethics of it are worth arguing about.
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Grief and blame
- Before-and-after structure
- Handles suicide irresponsibly
Great matchThe Spectacular Now
Tim Tharp
A charming boy drinking his way through senior year, told without the consolation of a lesson. If Alaska's smoking and self-destruction rang true, this is unflinching.
- Pranks and cigarettes
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Alcoholism front and centre
Worth a look — with a warningSpeak
Laurie Halse Anderson
A girl who stops talking after a party and the school year she spends not being asked why. Shares the silence at the centre; nothing else about it is comfortable.
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Grief and blame
- Depicts sexual assault
Great matchThe Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The original novel about a narrator circling a beautiful, unknowable person and getting the story wrong. Green has said as much; the resemblance is not accidental.
- A girl who stays unknowable
- Before-and-after structure
- Grief and blame
- Adults in 1920s New York
What should you read after Looking for Alaska?
Looking for Alaska by John Green works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky — another watchful boy adopted by louder, damaged friends who teach him how to be a person. It has the same tenderness and the same late reveal that recontextualises everything.
If what stayed with you was teenagers talking like philosophers, read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green instead: green again, with the same clever, over-articulate teenagers and the same insistence that the big questions deserve an answer. You know roughly what it will do to you. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell is the other strong option — two misfits on a school bus, one of them carrying a home life she won't discuss. Rowell writes first love with less philosophy and more precision than Green.
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