PAPER TOWNS

TITLE: PAPER TOWNS
AUTHOR: JOHN GREEN
Pages: 305
Date: 26/08/2010
Grade: 5-
Details: Young Adult
Own

My daughter has been raving about John Green and the books she's read by him for a long time now, so better late than never, I decided to pick one up and see what all the fuss is about. And, I'm happy to say I was not disappointed. It turns out my daughter has good taste in books.
Q(uentin) Jacobsen has loved Margo Roth Spiegelman for as long as he can remember, but as far as he is concerned she's completely out of his league.
Where he is what teenagers would call a nerd, she is beautiful, interesting and very adventurous.
Q has more or less resigned himself to only admiring Margo from afar when she climbs through his bedroom window one night and brings him on a night of revenge and adventure in Orlando, Florida. Sure that this night has changed his life, Q is very disappointed when Margo has disappeared the next day and doesn't reappear, even though they're both only weeks away from graduation.
But Margo has left clues as to where she's gone off to, clues Q and his friends manage to decipher and which will take them on an exhilarating road trip.
All of this, in and of itself, makes for a very interesting story. But this book is about a lot more. It's about teenagers and the way they live their lives, the way they see themselves and others and how the dynamics in a group can completely change when one person is added or taken away.
It is also about how well we actually know each other and ourselves, and about love and the things we can and can't do for it.
I loved the way Q grew into himself through this story and how he turned out to be so much more than he and the reader first expected.
My only and minor objections to this book are that I thought it started a bit slow and that although I certainly thought Margo was a very interesting character, I also found her somewhat self centered and not altogether likable. 
However, this book has gripped me enough to want to go and read John Green's other books. 
Two quotes:
"But before he was a minor figure in the drama of my life, he was - you know, the central figure in the drama of his own life."
"..or maybe we're grass - our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive."