Paper Towns by John Green

Title: Paper Towns

Author: John Green

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile

Release Date: October 16, 2008

Source: Puchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life--dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues--and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew...

I picked up Paper Towns by John Green following the recommendation of a friend. I had been told it was an excellent book, which turned out to be quite true. From the first page I was drawn in, and didn’t leave the world Green created until the very last page, and even then I wanted more. I’m glad I decided to follow my friend’s recommendation and pick up this book.

Quentin Jacobsen has been in love with his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman for as long as he could remember. They had been friends as kids until they found the dead body of a man in a park near their houses, after that things change. Then one night Margo shows up in his room asking him for help with an elaborate revenge plot. When the night is over and they go their separate ways, Quentin wakes up the next morning to find Margo gone. Discoveries are made, new friendships are forged and unlikely relationships happen all the while trying to figure out what happened to Margo.

I loved Quentin. He was just so easy to like and from the start of the book you just felt for him. Also he was the narrator and a great one at that. Most of the books I read either have a third person narrator or a female first person narrator so it was really refreshing to to read something narrated by a boy. Throughout the book I was always rooting for him no matter what he was doing. I was reading and just hoping he would figure out the clues Margo left behind and eventually find her. I mean the guy had waited for Margo his whole life and when she finally goes to him she just ups and leaves the next day. I just couldn’t help but feel for him.

Quentin’s friends were awesome, I always found myself laughing at whatever went down with Ben and Radar. Even though some of their comments were really cliché most of the time I couldn’t do anything but just sit there a giggle. And when Ben finally got a girlfriend it just made things that much more funny. The other characters were also great; Lacey wasn’t all she seemed to be and the other characters just added to the story. And Margo, well there aren’t really any words to describe Margo because you don’t really know who she is until the last few pages of the book, so you can read it and see it for yourself.

The plot wasn’t what I was expecting it to be, not that this is a bad thing. I had read the summary on the back of the book and had a vague idea of what the story would be like but it was so much better than what I had originally thought. I don’t want to describe it as a mystery because, while there is a mystery in the story, I don’t really feel like that was the point of the story. And the writing was amazing, just like everything else in the book, the writing just made me want to read more.

Overall, Paper Towns was a great read that I would recommend to anyone looking for humor and mystery or even someone looking to learn something about how we see ourselves and each other. I had never read anything by John Green before but I will be sure to pick up some of his other books the next time I come across them.