Paper Towns by John Green
Published: October 16th 2008
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Page Count: 305
Page Count: 305
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 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.
Review: This was the first ever John Green book that I read and I blame every single one of you for getting my hopes up so much. I mean, its not that I didn't enjoy the book, I really did enjoy it and at times struggled to put it down... however I've heard so much hype regarding Mr Green and all his books, I guess I just expected something more. Personally I felt the first half of the book was far superior to that of the second half and don't worry I have reasons for thinking this.
During what I like to class as the first and amazing part of the book Margo sneaks Q out of his room in the middle of the night and takes him on a quest of sorts, each task has to be crossed off her list and every single thing is as thrilling as the previous - leaving smelly fish in awkward places, removing peoples eyebrows, causing a disturbance at your "best friends" house as she sleeps with your "boyfriend"and of course breaking into SeaWorld. I loved every word of this part of the book and had so much trouble putting it down, I just had to know what was next on Margo's list and whether Q would be man enough to join.
Once that is over though I found the rest of the book a little drab, for Q his life more or less returns to normal until he realises Margo has disappeared and run off into the wide world again and because she is legally allowed to leave home the police do nothing to help, which is when Q decides to step in and follow "clues" to track down missing Margo, sounds just as thrilling if not more thrilling that earlier right? Well no not really, a lot of it is Q sulking about worrying if Margo is dead, if she's going to kill herself whilst somehow his nerdy friends climb the social ladder of awesome just in time for graduation and prom - because that's totally believable - (no its really not, like its just like what is going on, personally I'd have had it that his friends stuck where they were on the social ladder and either helped to find Margo or got super annoyed with his obsession with Margo). Any way at one point I was pretty convinced that Q would put all this effort into finding Margo and that he'd be convinced she was alive but in reality he found her dead body or y'know never found her at all, honestly either of those endings may have thrilled me slightly more than the fact he found her, living in a run down shed, just living day by day as she pleased and then that was it. I just felt there was so much build up to finding her and then nothing really happened, he found her, he moved on, she wandered. Maybe I'm not hipster enough to get it? I dunno.
During what I like to class as the first and amazing part of the book Margo sneaks Q out of his room in the middle of the night and takes him on a quest of sorts, each task has to be crossed off her list and every single thing is as thrilling as the previous - leaving smelly fish in awkward places, removing peoples eyebrows, causing a disturbance at your "best friends" house as she sleeps with your "boyfriend"and of course breaking into SeaWorld. I loved every word of this part of the book and had so much trouble putting it down, I just had to know what was next on Margo's list and whether Q would be man enough to join.
Once that is over though I found the rest of the book a little drab, for Q his life more or less returns to normal until he realises Margo has disappeared and run off into the wide world again and because she is legally allowed to leave home the police do nothing to help, which is when Q decides to step in and follow "clues" to track down missing Margo, sounds just as thrilling if not more thrilling that earlier right? Well no not really, a lot of it is Q sulking about worrying if Margo is dead, if she's going to kill herself whilst somehow his nerdy friends climb the social ladder of awesome just in time for graduation and prom - because that's totally believable - (no its really not, like its just like what is going on, personally I'd have had it that his friends stuck where they were on the social ladder and either helped to find Margo or got super annoyed with his obsession with Margo). Any way at one point I was pretty convinced that Q would put all this effort into finding Margo and that he'd be convinced she was alive but in reality he found her dead body or y'know never found her at all, honestly either of those endings may have thrilled me slightly more than the fact he found her, living in a run down shed, just living day by day as she pleased and then that was it. I just felt there was so much build up to finding her and then nothing really happened, he found her, he moved on, she wandered. Maybe I'm not hipster enough to get it? I dunno.
I'm about to read my first John Green book, Finding Alaska, if I end up liking his style I'll pick this up next.
ReplyDelete