Paper Towns

by John Green

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

Quentin “Q” Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spielman are going on an all-night revenge road trip through the city of Orlando. After this trip, Q hopes things will be different, that Margo will finally hang out with him at school, but when he gets to school the next morning, Margo isn’t there. Nor the day after, or the day after that. In fact, Margo has disappeared off the face of the earth. Together with his friends Radar and Ben, Q tries to solve the mystery that is Margo Roth Spielman.

I wasn’t planning on buying this book when I was in Newcastle, but when I picked up Half Bad it had a ‘second half price’ sticker on it. Later, I saw Paper Towns with the same sticker, while none of the other books on my list had a sticker. So I decided to bring Paper Towns with me as well.

What I liked:

I really like John Green’s writing. I loved the Fault in Our Stars, I loved Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and I really want to read the other books he’s brought out. I really enjoyed reading about the revenge-plan Margo had thought of, and the things they did after that for their all-night road trip. I am a huge fan of road trip books, movies, tv shows, etc., and I really want to make an amazing road trip myself, so I loved reading about it in this book. My favourite part was definitely the last part, where Radar, Ben, Q and another person (not going to tell you who, because it’s kind of a spoiler) go on an unplanned road trip the day they were supposed to graduate.

The way the road trip (and especially the stops at gas stations) is described made me laugh, and the incident that happened (though it made me a tiny bit scared for a moment) was funny as well, especially the reactions of the people in the car afterwards. It was a bit of a shame though, that the road trip was so short and only at the last part of the book. I had kind of expected the whole book being about an epic road trip, but it took almost 250 pages to get to the actual road trip part.

I also loved the little clues that Margo left behind, the trips that Q made to find out more about these clues and all the research the friends did to find out where Margo has gone to. I couldn’t really relate with any of the characters, maybe with Margo a bit. I would love to leave the town I’ve lived in for nearly eighteen years, and just go anywhere I want.

What I didn’t like:

There wasn’t much I disliked about this book, other than the fact that Ben liked to call girls ‘honeybunny’s’. It might have been funny the first time, but after a while it just became really annoying, and I just started to dislike Ben as a person. Okay, he’s an awesome friend, but he needs to get rid of the whole honeybunny thing. Also, the whole thing with Radar’s parents collecting black Santa’s felt a bit weird and unnecessary to me, it kind of felt – to me – like it was added only to make us laugh.

In the end, I really enjoyed Paper Towns. I don’t think it was just as amazing/better than The Fault in Our Stars, but I enjoyed it!