Wednesday 18 February 2015

Paper Towns Book Review

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At 11 years old Margo Roth Spiegelman and Quentin 'Q' Jacobsen find a dead body in the park by their houses.  Q has loved Margo from afar ever since. 7 years later Margo  appears at Q's window in the middle of the night  and  asks him to come  on an adventure with her. During the night Margo and Q wreck havoc on Margo's enemies and break into Seaworld. The next day Margo goes missing, but not before leaving a series of clues for Q to find her. As Q delves deeper and deeper into Margo's past in search for more clues, the more he realises that he never really knew Margo at all. 

The thing I found most interesting in Paper Towns was Q's perception of Margo. He built her up to be his perfect, dream girl. It's only after he begins to get to know her through the clues she's left behind that he begins to see her as a real person rather than a fantasy. But even Q's idea of her as a real person is wrong.  It's not real, it's not who Margo really is but only what Q thinks she really is.  I think everyone, myself especially, is guilty of moulding a person into something they're not in our heads, falling in love with an idea and then being disappointed after finding out who they really are.  I do this a lot, I build people up to be this amazing person, I even do this with people I know quite well and then I'm so disappointed when they're not who I want them to be.  So this really spoke to me on a more personal level. One of my favourite quotes in the book is towards the end  when Q realises that Margo isn't who he thought she was. 

'I realize that the idea is not only wrong but dangerous. What a treacherous thing it is to believe a person is more than a person.

That just speaks volumes to me.

All in all I really enjoyed this book. I found it gripping, laugh out loud funny at times, poignant and sad at others and in a lot of ways not what I was expecting. I also had to stop myself looking up the ending on Wikipedia a number of times. Having said that I had a quick look on goodreads and a lot of people have said that Paper Towns is pretty much exactly the same as John Green's earlier novel Looking for Alaska, which I haven't read (I am planning to read it) so I can't really comment. But I love John Green so I was always gonna enjoy it. I'm a great advocate of reading the book before seeing the film so I strongly recommend giving this a read because it is really good, and the film looks like it's gonna be good too. 

Have you read Paper Towns? What did you think?  Let me know by commenting below, on twitter or by sending me an email at lolarocknroses@gmail.com. Also have a look at my instagram,  facebook, bloglovin & pinterest

Love love love xxx

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