Maybe it's me... the other two John Green books I've read (Paper Towns and The Fault in our Stars) had average-to-mixed reviews from my GR friends but I enjoyed them both. This book has overwhelmingly positive reviews by my GR friends... and, well, you can see my 2 star rating of it; If this was the first of his books that I'd read, I would not have read another. 
 I've had problems with his characters in the past: in TFIOS I found them unrealistic, and in Paper Towns I found them both unrealistic and unlikeable. But story-wise, I was still able to enjoy those books. 
 In this book, however, I still found the characters both unrealistic and (extremely) unlikeable but also unfortunately, story-wise, this book was just dull for me. And somehow irritating at the same time. Nothing happens for half the book, then something happens, then nothing happens again for the rest of the book. And what is happening during those vast expanses of nothingness is also stupid and annoying: like, this book is giving off the very clear message that smoking (underage smoking, specifically) is cool. As is peer pressure. 
 Also, has anyone else noticed that Alaska from this book and Margo from Paper Towns are literally the exact same character?! Right down to highlighting pretentious lines of poetry.