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The title of this YA hit riffs Shakespeare: wholly appropriate for this story of teenage star-crossed lovers (and cancer patients). 16-year-old narrator Hazel is smart, funny, and sincere, and she tells a great story. Quirky, charming, heartbreaking.

John Green's 2005 novel was the most challenged book of 2015; according to the American Library Association, the most frequently cited reasons for the requests to remove it from a school or library were "offensive language and "sexually explicit descriptions." John Green responded, "What usually happens with Looking for Alaska is that a parent chooses one page of the novel to send to an administrator and then the book gets banned without anyone who objects to it having read more than that one particular page.”

Booklist calls this a "sharp, intelligent story, full of mathematical problems, historical references, word puzzles, and footnotes. Colin Singleton believes he is a washed-up child prodigy, a graduating valedictorian with a talent for creating anagrams. To make matters worse, he has just been dumped by his most recent girlfriend (all of them have been named Katherine), and he's inconsolable. What better time for a road trip! He and his buddy Hassan load up the gray Olds and leave Chicago. They make it as far as Gutshot, Tennessee, where they stop to tour the gravesite of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and meet a girl who isn't named Katherine. The laugh-out-loud humor ranges from delightfully sophomoric to subtly intellectual."

From the publisher: "Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there's a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett's son, Davis. Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts."

I went into this not knowing much about John Green’s personal history. I was surprised to learn that he’d nearly become an Episcopal priest, and that he held an early and formative job at Booklist magazine. Each topic he reviews here—Canada geese, sunsets, the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest—is a leaping off point to reflect upon something else, something deeper. Green’s lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression is thoroughly and tenderly documented. It was these moments of deep personal reflections that I enjoyed the most. I’m glad I read it in the audiobook format; Green is an excellent reader of his own work, and the audiobook contains several essays that don’t appear in the print edition. I’ve often said the sign of a great book, to me, is that, long after I turn the final page, I keep thinking about it. I’m still thinking about this one.