Book Blog #41: Paper Town by John Green

Title: Paper Town
Author: John Green
# of Pages: 305 (paperback)
Genre: YA, Mystery, Contemporary
Rating:★★★☆☆
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: Honestly? This was my least favorite John Green book so far. But it's probably my own fault. I didn't do my research and realize that one of the genres was mystery.

See, the cover looked so innocent! There was a nice little map with a big ol' push pin! And the title, Paper Towns, sounded so cute! Note that I didn't know what a paper town was at the time.

SPOILERS BEGIN

The only time I had to read this week was at night. I thought it was going to be a pleasant nighttime read, so you can imagine my horror when Margo and Q found that dead guy. And when Margo told Q to close the window and Q said that it was as if Margo saw a ghost, I flipped out. So I thought it'd be a good idea to read the back cover which said a bunch of stuff about discovering the real Margo. This added to my panic because I thought FOR SURE that Margo was going to be some ghost seer or something. And I hate ghosts!

By now, you can tell that I probably the biggest wimp ever.

Luckily (or unluckily for me. To save myself from further terror, I refused to read this book only during the day when, incidentally, I didn't have very much time to read, thus the five days it took me to finish a three-hundred page book) that wasn't what the book was about at all, but it didn't help that Q kept suggesting that Margo killed herself! This probably wasn't a good book for me.

Is it just me or did Margo seem a lot like Alaska (from Looking for Alaska) and Q seem like Miles (also from LfA)? Margo and Alaska seemed daring while the dudes were both wimpy, "perfect", and sheltered.

What I DID like was the familiarity of Green's writing style. He never fails to makeme laugh SOMEWHERE in his book My favorite part was when the people on the rode trip realized that Radar had to wear a Confederate shirt!

SPOILERS END

All that aside, this wasn't his finest work. But in his defense, Green wrote this in 2009. He improved a lot since then.

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Read the first draft here!