by John Green
As stolen from Amazon.com:
"Weeks before graduating from their Orlando-area high school, Quentin Jacobsen's childhood best friend, Margo, reappears in his life, specifically at his window, commanding him to take her on an all-night, score-settling spree. Quentin has loved Margo from not so afar (she lives next door), years after she ditched him for a cooler crowd. Just as suddenly, she disappears again, and the plot's considerable tension derives from Quentin's mission to find out if she's run away or committed suicide. Margo's parents, inured to her extreme behavior, wash their hands, but Quentin thinks she's left him a clue in a highlighted volume of Leaves of Grass. Q's sidekick, Radar, editor of a Wikipedia-like Web site, provides the most intelligent thinking and fuels many hilarious exchanges with Q. The title, which refers to unbuilt subdivisions and copyright trap towns that appear on maps but don't exist, unintentionally underscores the novel's weakness: both milquetoast Q and self-absorbed Margo are types, not fully dimensional characters. Readers who can get past that will enjoy the edgy journey and off-road thinking."
I read this book during finals week last spring. I should have been studying passé composé negatifs et les adjectifs, but instead I sat down and read this book—and no, I didn't fail my French final.
It's an adventure, coming-of-age, heart-wrenching, romance, mystery, poet-quotin' novel. Everything everyone loves about a good story all rolled into three hundred pages.
Unless you hate friendship, family, mysterious twists, a liberal dollop of philosophy, and a dash of Walt Whitman, you'll love this book. (And if you do hate any of the aforementioned things, particularly the first two, you are a veggie.) Paper Towns is a novel that can and will appeal to everyone for a very long time.
Please keep in mind that I didn't study for my French final when listening to my advice on good books.
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