Paper Towns Review

Paper Towns by John Green
Publish Date: October 16, 2008
Publisher: Speak

     Who is the real Margo?
     Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the wildly 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, 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 was really hesitant about reading this book. I liked TFIOS (Like being the very important keyword), but I thought it had too much hype, it was over-glorified, and the writing/characters were way too mature. I think I read this book because Cara D is going to be in the movie adaptation and the book was only $8.00 at BJs.
      So how did I feel about this book? I'm still reading it at this point
      Q is a pretty creepy guy. He's so obsessed with finding Margo. He has always watched her from afar and he even remembers her scent. Margo isn't any better. I love her wild personality, her drive for revenge, her creativity, intelligence, and way of thinking, but she's a terrible person for leading Q on. Her mission for Q is a wild goose chase. It's misleading. When you think you're going somewhere, you're halted by a dead end.

After Finishing the Whole Book
      I didn't expect this book to be great throughout, which is great because I would be very disappointed if I did. This book had its ups and downs. It was not consistent. The beginning was all about Q's boring, constant, uniform existence. Then, Margo comes along, shakes things up, and they execute their revenge. They have some fun, bond a bit, and then Margo leaves Florida. Goddamn...
      This leaves Q heartbroken in some way. He goes back to his boring life, obsessing over the thought of Margo and pulls his two friends into this mess.
      I was just aggravated by Q during this time. He keeps thinking She wants to be found by me. I must find her. As said above, he's just obsessed and annoying.
      But, the events really start snowballing and get exciting on graduation day. The real adventure starts and it's mind-blowing. Green has so much knowledge on road trips. It's thought out wonderfully and executed well. Seriously, I learned so much from the trip.
      I loved how everyone contributed to the trip. Lacey kept them going with her "knowledge" of nutrition. Radar helped by calculating speed, time, breaks, and all those variables to ensure that they get to their destination on time. Q...the only thing he really contributed was hope and determination. He was pretty useless out of all of them. Then, there's my favorite character in this book, Ben.
      Sweet, dirty, funny Ben. Love you to pieces. I think he's the reason why I kept reading this book. He is a GREAT, AMAZING, WONDERFUL comic relief.
      Anyway, I changed my thoughts on this book towards the end. Q isn't as terrible as I thought, it wasn't his fault. It was Margo all along. She's obsessed with Q, like he was obsessed with her, and she planned this whole elaborate plan to "be with him." This whole plan was to reminisce the old days-the days when they were close friends. She was the sick, puppet master.
      Well that's my interpretation...
      This book was so John Green. It was full of metaphors and had very intelligent, thoughtful ideas/writing. He's a very intelligent person and his writing is great, but it didn't speak to me. It's so high thinking and philosophical...which isn't really my reading style.