Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Speak
Publication Date: October 16th, 2008
Source: Purchased for Kindle
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back 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 of the girl he thought he knew.

John Green is a Legend of sorts. If you are a reader at all, you have surely heard his name.  Also there is that whole nerd fighter thing he has going on, whatever that is. But it's popular. Anyway, I read The Fault in Our Stars a while back and I liked it. I didn't love it, it was too wordy for me. I preferred the movie.

I feel like I will probably prefer the movie for Paper Towns as well. There is something wonderful about Greens writing, but at the same time, I don't click with it. There are moments when I read a line and I think, wow that was brilliant. But most often I'm bored and want the story to move along.

I should have known I wasn't going to love Paper Towns. I tried to read a book last year, that was compared to Paper Towns. I thought, sure it's compared to a John Green book, it has to be a winner. Nope, I couldn't get into it. I tried but it wasn't for me. I can't even think of what the name was, that's how much of an impact it's made on my life.

The thing that I disliked the most about Paper Towns was Margo. I thought she was an asshole. And Quentin thinks she shits candy. She does not. Though I'll give her props for some of the pranks she pulls off in the beginning. I was diggin the book early on... but then it just drops off and I was bored.

Finally things start happening again. But in the end, I felt like... really I pushed through all that for this. It was rather uneventful I'd say. I just expected more. And that could be because of the hype, or just because Greens writing isn't my thing. I'm not sure.

When I watched the movie trailer, I thought it looked like something I would really enjoy. I'm still going to give that a try, because sometimes the movie is better.

I would recommend this book for sure. I know a ton of people who have read and loved it. I just wish I would have liked it more. :/

About the authors:

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.

In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found on the Nerdfighters website.

Find John:

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