Paper Towns Review

I’m apologising in advanced here: I have recently decided to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), despite the fact that it is already halfway through the month. This means I have to write about 3,000 words a day if I want to complete it on time. This also means that my very minimal free time that I had before will now be gone until the end of the month. This includes my blog. There is a huge chance that I will not be able to get reviews up for the next couple of weeks so, to my very few and very amazing readers, I am sorry. But I will complete NaNoWriMo this year! (heh, as if that will actually happen…)

Anyhoo, this week I read yet another John Green book. I have to say, I’m getting addicted. This one was Paper Towns, a book that personally is currently one of my favourites. In a very short summary, this book is about a girl named Margo who disappears after the narrator Quentin spends a night running around the town with her doing crazy stuff. Quentin becomes obsessed with trying to find her and follows a bunch of clues, trying to piece together the story. It was very fast paced, not at all boring, and the ending was probably one of his more satisfying ones.

First off, I have to say that the age group for this book is slightly more mature, I can say that about most John Green books, but this one in particular sounds most like an average teenager. And by that, I mean that there is cussing and explicit mentions (or joking from the character’s perspectives) of sex. So if you’re a teenager, I’d say great! Go on and read! But if you’re one of the more sensitive types, you might want to avoid the book.

That being said, I feel like this is one of Green’s most realistic teenage-perspective books. They character’s aren’t over or under done, and to be honest, I found the characters saying things my friends or I would probably say. There were also a few references to things that made me flail around happily at the fact that I understood the reference (such as to Harry Potter, which was, in fact, mentioned). I could relate to bits of this book on a level that I normally can’t with most books, so I have to say I was quite impressed.

The point of this book was for there to be character development – specifically for the character Margo. So much of the plot was based off of that, and John Green did a very good job. It was a risky thing to do in a book, basing a plot fully on how much you learn about a character, but he implicated perfectly.

Overall, I’d give Paper Towns a five out of five. It easily made my top five books, probably above his Fault in Our Stars. The book was very well written, well thought out (unlike this review), and well detailed. I honestly don’t think that there was anything I didn’t like about it. I would recommend to anyone who wants to read a very teenager-ish, mystery-ish bo