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12.1k reviews for:

Paper Town

John Green

3.54 AVERAGE

adventurous inspiring slow-paced

Okay book, quite fun if a bit cringey. Don’t really see how it subverts the manic pixie dream girl trope though- by the end of the book we still haven’t learnt anything about Margo besides the fact that she’s oh-so-damaged and mysterious, and her character’s only purpose is to act as a plot device that helps Quentin’s character arc.
adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I wish I could give this 3 1/2 stars. The characters were interesting, but the plot was somewhat blah, exept for Margo & Quentin's all-nighter and the ending. Not much happened in the book, and it was sometimes confusing. However, I liked the descriptions, and prom night was... interesting, to say the least.
emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative mysterious relaxing sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

It was slow bjt the end was good
adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

 Do I have the sense of humor as an 18 year-old boy because I was laughing so hard.

I think I watched the movie when I was 15 and honestly didn't like it all that much and going into this I really did dread it but lowkey sooooo good. I apologize to John Green for not reading this sooner and ever doubting your ethereal author skills. 
emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I initially really disliked this book. I found it super corny, aggressively hipsterish, pretentious, and a little annoying. Whenever Margo would talk I would want to facepalm because of course she speaks in poems and capitalizes words in the middle of sentences so they aren't left out and breaks into sea world and throws dead fish into people's windows. And this also suffers from a common curse I see in many books of this style of which I like to call "millennial writing" where the characters start to speak like a 2010 tumblr post and you're just like... yeah someone born between 1981 and 1996 wrote this (surprisingly, John Green isn't a millennial! He just writes like one) and it shows. I found Quentin to be a super selfish protagonist who put his obsession for Margo at the forefront of his mind
and dragged his friends along with him (who spent hours of their days and their GRADUATION on helping this guy find a girl who clearly didn't want to be found) and still treated them like shit despite it all.
Too much time is spent on rereading a poem written by another author, and there's parts of the story where I was just getting tired of reading it and wanted it to be over with. 

However one thing I will say is that John Green has a really beautiful and poignant style of writing, where if his characters weren't just emo teenagers then I would be much more invested than I was. But the fact of the matter is that his words made me so enamored with this book that I couldn't put it down. Sure it was slightly corny and the characters could be insufferable or cringey or weird or freaks but the fact of the matter is you could read a few paragraphs of that and then get slapped in the face with the most beautifully written paragraph you've ever seen in your life and you're like, ok maybe I will stick around for a few more chapters.
The entire roadtrip chapter was actually so fun and entertaining and it really did capture that adolescent feeling of being with your friends and driving and everyone is tired and giddy and you love each other even if things are changing and you know it's going to be ok.  Although maybe it is a little unrealistic that a teenagers parents would let them skip out on high school graduation to drive 19 hours up from Florida to New York to look for your missing friend who may or may not be there, I didn't read this book expecting realism.


Frankly I would have probably enjoyed this book a LOT more if I was a teenager, which is definitely part of the reason why I couldn't connect to it as much. A lot of the pain of change and loss isn't as close to me as it could be. Despite that and some of the flaws in terms of characters and dialogue, the book isn't as "butt" as I had originally thought it was, and actually shaped up to be pretty good. Thanks John Green. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous funny mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I thought the book was really well written and enjoyable! Nothing beats John Green. I loved the ending and how everything played out, even if it wasn’t what I had imagined.