Summer List Review {Looking for Alaska + Contracted}

This is the fifth installment of me reviewing a list of books and movies I set out to read, watch, and enjoy throughout the summer (even though this is going up in the winter). You can check out my other posts in the following links. 

Summer Reading and Movie List

First Installment

Second Installment

Third Installment

Fourth Installment 

Next up is Looking for Alaska by John Green. Anything written by Green is all the rage among fangirls and kids who never read, so I was all like why not. 

Before I go any farther, I'd like to say I read The Fault in Our Stars and enjoyed it a lot better than I'll ever admit. I loved Green's writing style and it's one of the few romance novels I've ever liked. I know a lot of people say it "romanticizes cancer" or that Augustus is way too perfect to ever be a real person, but I looked past all these things rather easily to my surprise. Books (for me) are a way to create unrealistic life situations and turn them into something as realistic as possible. Saying The Fault in Our Stars is an awful book because it portrays an unrealistic love story is in many ways like saying "The Lord of the Rings is a bad book because that could never happen in real life." Well duh, that's the point of books:  Creating worlds and love stories and plots that will never happen in the real world.

Alas, that's a side rant that's been building up inside me for a long time. Also it's probably the only rant I've ever put on this blog that doesn't involve feminism or a cuss word so I'm not sure where I'm going in my life.

But I digress.

Looking for Alaska is the second John Green book that I've acquired and read. I hate to say that I wasn't a big fan of it. I felt that I loved Green's writing a LOT better in TFIOS versus Looking for Alaska. 

For one, the main character annoyed me beyond ever return. I was so done hearing about "how many layers of clothing" was between him and Alaska and how badly he wanted to have sex with her. Every time he was around her he immediately noticed what she was wearing and called her hot/a babe/other terms I hate. I mean for God's sake the cover sleeve straight up described Alaska as sexy. If I'm not mistaken the very first time we our introduced to Alaska the first thing that comes to Pudge's mind (the main character) is that she's hot. The entire time I was inwardly screaming THERE HAS TO BE MORE TO ALASKA THAN HER LOOKS.

Also the character of Alaska herself was irritating and hypocritical. She was constantly preaching about breaking patriarchal society, yet if anything she was conforming to it. To me I felt she was an obsessive girlfriend who toyed with her friends emotions and couldn't even control her own. I can't really describe it to be honest. She was spastic and a very stereotypical "hot girl." 

Anyways, not my favorite John Green book. I'm hoping to read his other books so I can get more of a feel for the guy, but I was rather disappointed. The ending wasn't as fulfilling as I had hoped, and the book was not nearly as enjoyable as The Fault in Our Stars.

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Then I watched a movie by the name of Contracted. It was very...interesting...and I should stop there.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't an awful movie necessarily, but it would be definitely shelved away in the gross/horrifying sub genre of horror. It wasn't necessarily 'shit is jumping out at me' scary, but more of a 'what is happening to her nails/teeth/eye/lady parts' scary.

But here's a quick summary if you made it past the freaky movie poster:

A girl whose name I can't even remember goes to a party and does the one thing no one should ever do at a party:  She sets her drink down. *face palms* Honestly after this I was getting to be a bit uninterested as this all happened within five minutes of the movie, and I was already predicting the outcome. Her drink then gets drugged by a mysterious man. Then, despite her being a lesbian, she has sex with said man who spiked her drink (although this can be attributed to the fact she drank a drugged drink but whatever).

After that a lot of random shit happens that eventually leads up to her having a massive constant period, a single red eye, weird rashes all over, and her teeth and nails just nonchalantly fall off all over the place.

Somewhere in between the rape and her final moments she fights with her mom (who thinks her daughter is constantly on drugs and spends most of her time on screen bitching and yelling), she breaks up with her girlfriend, she repeatedly visits an imbecile of a doctor who claims she's contracted a simple STD and essentially calls her a whore, she loses her job because, hello, her finger nails are falling off, and somewhere in the middle I remember her smoking marijuana.

Basically the plot line revolves around people repeatedly yelling at her yet NO ONE BOTHERS TO HELP HER EVEN THOUGH SHE IS CLEARLY DYING.

Anyways it was a pretty good movie if you're looking for something that will make you want to throwup every two minutes plus a relatively decent plot line. Although it did really annoy me that they never fully revealed how she got so sick. You're lead to believe that the guy who raped her gave her a horrifyingly nasty STD, but this is never really confirmed. Like they never actually tell you anything about the disease or the guy nor do they resolve anything at the end. Kinda annoying.

On the good side, the movie makes me never want to have sex.

Have a fabulous day.