14. Paper Towns

Book #14: Paper Towns

Author: John Green

Published: May 3, 2010

305 pages

5 gold stars

(summary from Goodreads)

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

I will forever only have kind, wonderful things to say about John Green's writing. I hope that one day, I will be able to write a story half as good as any of his where my readers are left feeling every emotion possible like I am when I'm finished one of his. I first fell in love with him when I read Looking For Alaska, which pulled me in and never let me go. In fact, it's still got a hold on me. This was the second of his that I read and I was just as yanked and beaten with emotion as I was from Alaska. In both, the main characters fall for emotionally unavailable girls and get sucked into a life that they never imagined they'd be a part of.

Quentin's girl is Margo Roth Spiegalman, his next door neighbour whom he's had a crush on for many years. After one wild night, his lie changes. Quentin is a believable teenager, falling head over heels for someone he'll never have, but believing still that there is a chance. Margo is quirky, eccentric and crazy, the kind of girl any guy would fall for. She has a dark side to her, a side she only lets Quentin see. When she disappears one day, he knows he has to find her. The clues start showing up and he knows that they are for him, that she wants him to find her. His journey begins on the first page, the moment Margo knocks on his window, but as everything is set into motion, he learns more about himself and Margo that he ever thought he'd know. And we fall in love: with him, with Margo and with the Paper Towns that she so desperately wants to become.

Green's writing style chokes me up with tears and laughter and everything in between. His prose captures me, making me dog ear the pages so that I can return to read it again at will. His heartbreaking love stories of two teenagers that find each other and never let go, is too real to think of as just a story. His characters are real. Quentin sits behind you in class. Margo floats down your road like a bird. The live on even after the last page, begging you to live your life the way that they have: without fear, without doubt, without future. Carpe diem.

"Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one."