Paper Towns in Our Shared Shelf

Feb 20, 2016 Narges rated it really liked it

it was a fun read, not boring.
the story had a good flow, and I liked the writing style. charectures were young adult but the ending and the emotions were grown up enough.
It was that old and familiar struggle we all may have in our life, not loving who we pretend we are, not loving the place and people around us.
I could totally relate to that

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Apr 26, 2016 Lacey Louwagie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, youngadult, 2016-read-harder-challenge

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge Item: A book that was adapted into a movie

This book felt a little uneven to me, and also like a bit of a rehash of the John Green I've read in the past (Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Let It Snow). This was somewhat intentional on Green's part, as he was attempting to use this book to deconstruct the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope he relied upon in "Looking for Alaska." I very much appreciated the themes in this book, which were the idea that we can Book Riot Read Harder Challenge Item: A book that was adapted into a movie

This book felt a little uneven to me, and also like a bit of a rehash of the John Green I've read in the past (Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Let It Snow). This was somewhat intentional on Green's part, as he was attempting to use this book to deconstruct the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope he relied upon in "Looking for Alaska." I very much appreciated the themes in this book, which were the idea that we can never truly know someone and that there is a difference between our "idea" of who someone is and who that person REALLY is, and that the "ideas" that we project on to people for our own needs can be stifling.

Where the book is less successful is in ACTUALLY deconstructing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope -- because we see so little of Margo, we never really get to know who she "really" is at all, so she mostly remains just an idea, albeit with a caution to the reader that that is not enough.

The pacing felt a little inconsistent; the middle got a little dark and slow, and I was glad it didn't stay that way for too long. I enjoyed Green's typically quirky characters, particularly Radar, although I was sometimes impatient with the high school antics (prom, graduation, bullies, etc.) that seemed to intrude upon the larger plot of the mystery of what had happened to Margo. But that probably just proves how old I am getting. ;) I found the mystery itself to be compelling, although the clues were sometimes too convoluted to be believable -- both that someone would leave that sort of clue, AND that another someone would figure out how to interpret it. But I loved learning about Paper Towns (the author was inspired by one in South Dakota!), and this book made me want to go urban exploring.

[Also, the movie did a pretty good job of conveying the book's themes even without all the introspection, which impressed me. Quentin and Radar seemed well-cast, Ben seemed to be only like, 12, and all-in-all it was a three-star movie to go with a three-star book.] ...more

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Nov 11, 2008 Jade added it · review of another edition

a return to form for john green!

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May 18, 2012 Liza rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: realistic

3.5! I laughed out loud at several parts of this book- Green is SO very funny. And I do love how Quentin is such an individual and doesn't play in (as much) to the usual garbage that is middle school and high school. And there are always these little nuggest in his books that make you kind of sit back and think. If these lines make me, an adult, do that, I can imagine the affect they have on teenagers. My favorite: "...maybe we're grass--our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as ...more

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