Paper Towns

Author: John Green

Genre: Young Adult, Fiction, Contemporary, Mystery  

Publisher: Speak

Year: 2009

Ranking: 3/ 5

  Synopsis

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...

The Author

John Green's first novel, “Looking for Alaska”, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel, “An Abundance of Katherines”, was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel, “Paper Towns”, is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel, “The Fault in Our Stars”, was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The praise included rave reviews in Time Magazine and The New York Times, on NPR, and from award-winning author Markus Zusak. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called “Will Grayson, Will Grayson”, published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of “Will Grayson Will Grayson”, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios.

Personal Experience with This Book

I decided to read this book because I saw the trailer for the movie and I got the idea of ​​"I want to read the book before watching the movie”. John Green had not awakened any interest in me so far because I have always believed he is overrated as a writer. Everyone seems to love him but the only reference they have is "The fault in our starts", a book that I refuse to read and I'll never watch the movie. But that's another issue.

The story is interesting at first sight for the whole mystery of the disappearance but it did not convince me at all as Green's reflected it in the book. Actually I found it too unrealistic and unbelievable. The characters were at a much greater intellectual and rationale level than their age and that made me not to feel identified with them. They were unrealistic and plain for me.

Quentin is a guy who spends his life bored and watching it pass by without enjoying it. There are no adventures in his life and he is not interested in them either. But then Margo comes into sight, or Margo reappears in his life and it seems that everything revolves around her. His whole life is turned upside around to find her. I understood the concept of his love for her, or the idea that he is doing it because he is worry, but there came a point where his obsession with finding Margo bothered me. I mean, I understand that he was concerned that she disappears but 1. It was not the first time she did it and 2. This girl was a complete stranger for him before the night she appeared in his window. She had not speak to him for so many years and when she needs she comes looking for him but he makes her in the center of his life.

I can rescue from this book the secondary characters’ interaction. The friendship between them throughout the whole book is very unique. Quentin, Ben and Radar make a perfect trio that makes you remember that time in high school where you did things with friends that much later looked stupid but, still you remember them with a smile on your face. That was the feeling it gave me. Lacey also incorporated some humor and feminism to the trio. However, although their interaction that for me was what the book had as a good point, the characters by themselves did not leave any mark, none of them becomes someone important to you and do not generate that feeling of attachment that often happens. So not even with Ben, who was my favorite character because he was so funny, I felt something special.

The part I liked the most was the last one because that's when the interaction between the 4 characters is reflected the most and it is when they are traveling to find Margo. The end seemed very bland to me. I did not find it interesting or enjoyable.

I think this is a funny book that you can read to pass a day when you have nothing else to do or to read but it's not super masterpiece in terms of literature, much less a story that stays in your mind for long. One of those books that I personally consider "from the lot". I gave it a 3 out of 5 because I had things to rescue from it and only that but, It left a big distaste because I thought at one point that I was misjudging Green by the fact that everyone seems to love him and I realized that I wasn’t wrong because he is just not the kind of writer I'd like to read at all. I still refuse to read “The fault in our starts” and for Green’s fans I am sorry if this review wasn’t of you appeal but it is my opinion after all.

I will watch the movie because I liked the trailer and because I want to see how they will put it into the screen.