Review | Paper Towns by John Green

Paper Towns by John Green
Published By: Bloomsbury
Published On: September 22, 2009
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 305
Format: Paperback
Source: Bought
Rating: ★★★★

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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...

Quentin had admired next-door neighbour Margo Roth Spiegelman from a distance ever since their childhood friendship dissipated when high school began. Therefore, when she appears in his bedroom late one night to enlist his help in a crazy revenge scheme of hers, Q, though slightly shocked, agrees to help her. The next day, however, Margo is nowhere to be found and Q must use her mysterious clues to solve the mystery of Margo Roth Spiegelman.

This was a bit of a slow starter for me as I struggled to get into it. I was quite unsure about it for the first half as there didn’t seem to be all that much going on apart from the introduction to the characters. I still liked it in the beginning but not as much as I had hoped.

Luckily, though, I couldn’t put the book down for the second half. Once the story really got going I was so engrossed in the mystery and started to really enjoy it. I enjoyed all of the different aspects to the story and ended up spending a good few hours just sitting in the same spot reading this book.

I really enjoyed the revenge plot aspect of this book. This was probably the most fun part of the book for me. I loved the excitement of their revenge scheme and the exhilaration due to the fact that the characters could have been caught at any moment. This was such a fun part to read about.

One of my favourite things about this book was the very unique and interesting characters. John Green’s characters, or at least the ones I have read about, are always very unique and different from the usual teenager. Margo and Q in particular were no different. I loved how different the two characters were yet they were drawn together. Even the supporting characters were great fun to read about.

I can’t review this book without commenting on John Green’s amazing writing style. He writes the most amazing books but has such a unique way of doing so. I always find his writing style to be very individual but great to read. The writing style in this book was to his unique style, complete with the unusual wit and quirkiness.

The one minor flaw I had with this book was the ending. I didn’t think the ending was bad, I just found it a little disappointing. It was well written and a decent ending but it was a bit anti-climactic. I did still enjoy it but it was not as great as I had expected it to be considering the rest of the book. 

Overall, I really enjoyed almost every aspect of this book. Despite the slightly slow start, I went on to read the entire second half of this book in one night, as I could not put it down. I loved the story and the characters, which were the typical John Green quirky, unusual characters and were great fun to read about. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys John Green’s writing style, or anyone who enjoys quirky and fun books.