Paper Towns by John Green

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

Second best John Green book so far, and one of the best books I’ve read this year. Considering that it’s only April, John Green has forced me to set my standards high. That rocks.

Like in many of his other novels, Paper Towns is about a boy (Quentin Jacobsen) who loves a girl (Margo Roth Spiegelman–what a name). What I LOVED about this one, is that as the book goes on, Quentin realizes that he doesn’t know a damn thing about who that girl really is. He’s invented a version of Margo that he pines over from his bedroom, staring into her window and imagining being with her. When she suddenly disappears, after a wild night they spend together, he tries to track her down following clues he’s convinced he left for her. As he follows the clues, he realizes that Margo is a real person, about whom he knows nothing, and not the Manic Pixie Dream Girl he’s created for himself to love.

It’s kind of a sad book, in my opinion, because many of the characters are profoundly unhappy in some way. There’s a lot of talking about working blindly towards the future you think you should have, rather than what you actually want. The whole good grades –> good college –> good career thing. But there’s a lot of fun, too — silly pranks and of course, the main character’s best friends are hysterical (John Green can really write a best friend).

“When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”