Book Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Oh how I do love John Green.

Not only does Green populate his works with unforgettable characters and situations, be packs them with persistently challenging ideas, too. And Paper Towns, Green’s 3rd foray into Young Adult lit, is no exception to that rule.

Our tale begins with a ninja. A girl ninja who happens to read Walt Whitman. And one night, she unexpectedly pops up in the middle of the night, at the window of an old childhood friend. And what is said ninja’s name? Margo Roth Spiegelman. And what is our ninja’s game? Namely, to enlist her onetime playmate Quentin, or “Q” for short, into becoming a fellow ninja/sidekick/getaway driver on a series of cleverly plotted all-night-escapades. Quentin, shocked and thrilled by the abrupt reappearance of a girl he hasn’t had contact with for years, suddenly finds himself drawn into the unimaginable twists, turns and tangles that all add up to Margo Roth Spiegelman, our Whitman reading ninja.

An enigma wrapped up inside a mystery, Margo is the kind of girl whose orbit everyone wants to be part of; and, she is also the kind of girl who can disappear from family and friends for days or weeks at a time, leaving only small, seemingly insignificant “clues” behind in her wake.

Part mystery, part nail-biter, and part quest, Paper Towns is ultimately a story about finding yourself lost, finding your way out, and just plain finding yourself in the most unlikely of ways and in the most “consistently misimagined” of places.

Favorite quote, which truly sums up the premise of Paper Towns:

“It is easy to forget the world is full of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.”

A fabulous read and very highly recommended.

~Reviewed by L. Payne, The Book Gobbler