Paper Towns
Green, John. Paper Towns. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print.
     Quentin ”Q” Jacobsen is shy but determined when it comes to Margo Roth Spiegelman. Quentin has had a crush on Margo since they were kids. Q and Margo are neighbors, living in a subdivision known as Jefferson Park in Orlando, Florida. How hard could it be to pursue a girl who you’ve known nearly your whole life, let alone live so close to? So close yet so far away, it seems. As Margo is one of the most popular girls at their high school, you could see Q as a bit of an outcast. Not that he has no friends or people don’t know him, he just keeps to himself. Besides his two best friends, Ben Starling and Marcus “Radar” Lincoln. Ben is in the school band and Radar is always spending his time editing on a website called “Omnictionary”- similar to well known website Wikipedia. You can always find the trio hanging around the band room before class. One night, as Q is heading to bed (a school night), the famous Margo Roth Spiegelman climbs through his bedroom window before a night that Q will never forget.
     What do you do when the girl you secretly love and have always loved climbs through your window late on a school night? You don’t question it, right? Well, Margo needed Q’s help. She was dressed in all black with black face paint to complete the look, as to not be seen in the shallow hours of the dark night. She needed his car. As Margo’s dad came outside in a huff when he noticed she was gone, she had to go back home. But, not for long. Quentin (not asking many questions), grabbed the keys to his mom’s Chrysler minivan and waited for Margo’s return. As Q tried to tell her that there was school the following day and they shouldn’t be doing whatever she planned on doing, Margo didn’t take no for an answer. “Yeah, I know,” “There’s school tomorrow and the day after that, and thinking about that too long could make a girl bonkers. So, yeah. It’s a school night. That’s why we’ve got to get going, because we’ve got to be back by morning.”
      The night started by Margo sending Q to get supplies for her. All he had was several hundreds of dollars (Margo’s bat mitzvah money) and absolutely no knowledge of what was going to happen that night. Margo tells Q where to drive, and that there are eleven parts to her “plan” of the night. Margo is a very different girl. Although popular in her high school, she has a very different mindset than those of her peers. For example, parts of her plan of the night included attaching a Club to her ex boyfriend Jase’s steering wheel of his Lexus. Jase and ex friend Becca should have known better than to sneak around behind Margo’s back, of course she was going to find out that Jase was cheating on her with Becca and she would completely sabotage them. They deserved it, right? Attaching the Club to Jase’s steering wheel was only Part 1. Q and Margo soon after proceeded to sneak into Becca’s house with spray paint and catfish. With Q’s help, Margo hid the catfish between folded pairs of shorts in Becca’s closet, and Margo instructed Q to leave Becca a note saying “A message from Margo Roth Spiegelman: Your friendship with her-it sleeps with the fishes”. As if Margo wasn’t blunt enough, she topped off this part of the plan by spray painting the letter M on the wall of Becca’s bedroom before leaving.
     After this night, probably Quentin’s best night yet, Margo and Q had to return to school the following day. Not much to Q’s surprise, Margo was a no show the next day. They had a long night, but that doesn’t account for Margo’s following absences from school. After being gone for nearly a week, everyone was worried. Her parents expected her to return soon, she had run away from home before. Quentin took this harder than her family was. He was completely in love with her, and it was up to him to find her. After digging through his room and hers, he started finding clues that she left him. Margo’s sister said that she sometimes left clues when she left, hoping to be found. She wanted Quentin to find her. He can’t stop thinking about her, and he started off on an expedition to find her.
     Not to spoil the ending, but this book is certainly one of my favorites that I have read so far. The author does an amazing job of making the reader feel as though they are apart of the story themselves. It is an intriguing, “edge of your seat” type of book. The author makes relatable references to the social norms of high school, and how that has made Margo feel trapped. She feels like a paper girl in a paper town, and she needs to move on to bigger and better things in her life. This book is a perfect read for teenagers.