Name: Paper Towns
Rating: 3.546259842519685 (2540 reviews)
ISBN: 9780142414934

John Green

One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Reprint.

Paper Towns

I think im being generous with giving this book 3 stars and to simply put it, it’s because of the last section of the book that I really enjoyed. The whole journey of driving to New York was probably more entertaining than the whole group trying to piece together the clues Margo “left behind”. I did like the dynamic of the friend group and them being together felt more natural than whatever relationship Q and Margo “had”.

The dialogue was honestly so cringey and made me forget that these are supposed to be seniors in high school (tho it did make me laugh sometimes)…they seemed less mature for what they’re supposed to be portrayed as. I will warn that there are probably some triggering dialogue with slurs thrown around. 

lily

I think im being generous with giving this book 3 stars and to simply put it, it’s because of the last section of the book that I really enjoyed. The whole journey of driving to New York was probably more entertaining than the whole group trying to piece together the clues Margo “left behind”. I did like the dynamic of the friend group and them being together felt more natural than whatever relationship Q and Margo “had”.

The dialogue was honestly so cringey and made me forget that these are supposed to be seniors in high school (tho it did make me laugh sometimes)…they seemed less mature for what they’re supposed to be portrayed as. I will warn that there are probably some triggering dialogue with slurs thrown around. 

mallorie 🦌

Having been in love with Margo forever, Quentin is happy to help her with her strange plots and campaigns for revenge, but when she vanishes one evening without a trace, Quentin finds himself delving into clues in order to resolve many unanswered questions. 75,000 first printing.

Itzel

Paper Towns is the third book by John Green I read, after The Fault in Our Stars and Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

After three books, I think I've come to enjoy John Green's writing. It feels very very very relatable, and probably because it's YA, easy to read.

The thing is, this book was basically about learning that people are layers, and layers, and layers. That as we think about other persons, others do the same, they are not secondary characters in our own lives.

And just as Quentin did, falling in love with the idea we have of a person is very common, and often leads us to disappointment. And maybe, if we just got around the concept that everyone is their own selves and we shouldn't expect them to act as we want them to act, it wouldn't happen.

The whole sense of mystery and adventure was especially appealing to me, and the third part, the roadtrip was, to put it shortly, Brilliant! 

Eh, probably I also felt it relatable because Quentin and everyone was in their final month of high school, and having gone through that just a while ago... I felt understood.

Sarah Sammis

I thought this was a great book - there were times when it was a bit slow and there wasn’t much development in the mystery, but mostly it was funny, amusing, deep, thought-provoking, heartbreaking etc. Especially towards the end and the whole road-trip part was great. I also loved that it had a proper ending. Definitely recommend.

Evie Dean

well, this is a complete waste of time. i’m actually on a mission to re-read all of john green’s books atm. i didn’t know what sparked the idea but i guess i just wanted to know if i’d still like the books i have read before. i didn’t even finish this back then in middle school and almost didn’t now. i guess that’s really saying something.

Daniel Spruill

WRECKED ME. Thanks yet again, John. The best author ever.

chloe rae

I had no idea this book was going to be funny. I mean, it was HILARIOUS. I was flat-out laughing the whole time! And even though the book was already amazing, the last hundred pages or so really got me. At that point I couldn't put it down, not for a second. So well written. John Green has yet to disappoint me.

Annika Arguemore

first of all, if you'd say this book was a lot like Looking For Alaska that's when you're slightly right but you're also mostly wrong. Margo, in a lot of ways, is not like Alaska. the only thing they have in common is probably their intellectual bad assness and their mysterious auras.

I can relate to Margo. I've made the same mistakes she's made (falling into the wrong crowd and shit). I didn't think my friends were genuine either but unlike her, I didn't have the courage to prank them and throw fish around their properties. I think I live in a paper town. I was a paper girl but I'm not anymore, I guess. I'm still a paper girl in a sense that I still don't know who I am and I hide my thoughts in fear that my current friends might abandon me if they saw the real me (which they've seen and they stayed. thank God) I just need a vacation from all of this things happening surrounding me. it's like I want to escape and be in another place where people expect nothing from me and they don't know me or who I was or what I've done. 

now playing: All Signs Point To Lauderdale by ADTR. this book matches almost perfectly with this song.

I love how this book also emphasizes the humanness of people and that you should really just accept them as they are and not hate them because they're not your idea of who they're supposed to be; because they're not who you thought they were. this book honestly gives me hope. I wish I could still believe that not everyone here's make believe and that there's still sincerity in all that people do.

★★★★★ // Favorite John Green book. I didn't realize how much I loved this book until I re-read it a few years later. It was nostalgic. Just like Q, I didn't love high school as much as I've been letting on. But what sustains my fondness over it isn't the people and the big moments, but that temporal moment of my life when I was young and bitter and still utterly curious about the world. And this quest to find Margo had both been a not-so-subtle quest to find himself, and this romantic idea of wandering the earth to find his 'soul mate.' The Greek belief that soul mates are bound to find each other's half and reconnect is reminiscent of this journey, but I'd like to think that staying together forever is not necessarily the case. Sometimes meeting that one person who understands you is enough. More so, I loved this book's tackling of our projections—of how much we idealize a person up to such point that we forgot that we do not own their memories, and neither how they'll turn out to be. What a treacherous thing to believe—that a person is more than a person.

Ivy Vatsala

Average read. Compelling characters but the plot stagnates after a while. 
Though I was glad to learn about paper towns, the concept was fascinating.

Paper Towns

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