Paper Towns: a brief review

taken from johngreenbooks.com

When I reread John Green's masterpiece The Fault in Our Stars a couple weeks ago, I decided it was time to finally get the two Green books I haven't read yet crossed off the list. I've wanted to read Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines for a long time, but it just hasn't happened. At $5 each on the Kindle, it was kind of a summer read no brainer.

Quentin Jacobsen has lived next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman, his childhood best friend and current object of his love from afar. As they grew up they also grew apart; Quentin now spends his time with the other band and gamer geeks while Margo comfortably resides at the top of the social food chain as Queen Bee. When she suddenly appears in his bedroom window one night in the spring of their senior year and asks him for a favor, he happily obliges. Quentin expects their relationship to be back to their childhood version of normal the next day at school, but instead finds out that Margo is inexplicably missing. He launches himself - and his friends - into a full fledged investigation into the mystery of Margo Roth Spiegelman.

So here's the thing: I really love The Fault in Our Stars and I really love Looking for Alaska. I really love John Green. I think he's an incredible writer and I've made that pretty well known. Love him, love his style, love the way he writes characters, love his wit, etc. etc. But I was a little disappointed in this one. For the majority of the book, all I could think about was that Quentin and Margo were basically exactly the same as the main characters in Looking for Alaska, which was a bummer because of how great Green is at writing characters. I also felt like, even though I was interested in pushing through and finding out the answer to the mystery, the majority of the book was kind of treading water. It didn't seem like much was progressing in the plot, and every time Quentin would get excited about a new lead it would actually be a false alarm. That might be realistic, but it's a little frustrating in a book.

All of that being said...the last 30% of the book was pretty great. I really loved the portrayal of friendship and adventure that's depicted, and it's the funniest part of the book by far (in my opinion). Overall, I would definitely say that I liked it, I just didn't love it as much as I expected. I'm still excited to get Katharines read soon, though!