Independent Reading- Paper Towns

Paper Towns is a book that before they die, everyone should read. While it isn’t a book that makes you think, it has good morals and life lessons incorporated into it. It incorporates love and mystery and a good old road trip, with lots of humor.

The book starts off with Quentin Jacobsen, a senior who has been in love with his neighbor since he was little. Margo Roth Speiglman. They grew apart as they grew up so they don’t talk as much anymore. Then one night, out of the blue, Margo knocks on his window and takes him around the same town they live in to pull pranks on people she doesn’t like. The next morning, Q thinks that she will acknowledge him at least in the hallways but he finds out that she is not there. She ran away. Again. Q knows about her runaway stories and she often leaves clues behind, to make it a fun adventure for everyone. Since Q just spent the night with Margo, he believes that she must have left clues for him. She did. He follows her clues to abandoned buildings, pseudovisions, and finally a made-up town in New York. He finds this clue on Graduation Day and of course he has to drag his friends into coming along with him on a 22 hour road trip. When they finally find her, she acts completely different than what they thought that she would. The ending is for you to find out, I won’t spoil it.

I can relate to Q because I find that I think I know people but I don’t really know them. He finds that people have different views of someone but they are completely wrong about that person. I feel like I learned that you shouldn’t be satisfied with just accepting the mask that the person puts up, you should try to look behind it and see if the person needs help with becoming who they are. I also think that a lot of people who seem like they have a great life and a perfect face, can really be wearing a mask and hiding their other self. The weaknesses in this book are very slim but I would hope for John Green to write a sequel or an epilogue because you want to know more after the end of the book. A strength of this book is the way they mark the chapters. In the hours of the road trip, they mark the time by saying 21st hour or 18th hour. Also John Green split up the book into 3 different sections which makes the reader connect different things that they are learning about in the book. Overall this book helped me connect to other people and helped become a better friend.