Paper Towns, by John Green

Paper Towns was essentially a very well-written book about a boy falling in love with a girl who would never love him back. John Green writes very good books but with very sad endings. A boy follows this girl all over the country following her clues, thinking she left them for him to find, only to find out she never had any feelings for him at all. I loved that she knew herself enough to follow her heart, but I found it very sad for Quentin that his love for her was never reciprocated.

Paper Towns is a book that you read in prep school and believed how 'true love' is supposed to be. But once you read it again as an adult, you see how delusional characters such as Quentin actually are. As much as I love Green's stories, Paper Towns seemed to be a premature all-round good story. This 'thing' with romance novels using a love interest as motivation for characters to do/be more than any other one dimensional average protagonist feels so stagnant in terms any sort of organic development, sort of as a placeholder or 'excuse' to why characters do certain things, such as Quentin. However, the book is really easy to ingest, as it keeps the reader on their toes to the ambiguous "What will happen?" for every page turn. Just wish Looking For Alaska got a movie instead haha.

Paper towns, is in my opinion one of John Greens most engrossing novels. As a reader i was constantly kept in suspense making me not want to put the novel down right till the end. The characters are well developed and leave us with so many great life points to ponder upon.

In my opinion not on of Green’s best books. Why does Margo just want to escape and now only Quentin (Q) is good enough? The ending did not reach the expectation I created because of the other books. The obsession Q created of Margo was annoying. Q was too afraid to do anything and complained about everything while Margo just wanted revenge.

Re-reading a book is always tricky because you can have a nostalgic moment or an epiphany of stupidity. The second read on this book brought with it a bitter taste in my mouth when I realized that it too follows a very simple story base that most of John Green’s romance novels contain. And realizing this kind of made the book lack originality but it was an alright read, nothing too fantastical.