Book Review: Paper Towns

"Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint, or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town."

Hi, I'm Natasha, one of the new contributors to Pencil Rubbings! My main blog is located here. I'm reviewing Paper Towns by John Green, a book I just finished yesterday because it's simply amazing.

A story for elder teens, Paper Towns is the story of Quentin Jacobsen (known as Q to his friends) and his neighbour and the girl he's loved since he was a child, Margo Roth Spiegelman. After finding a dead body at the local park when they're nine years old, they don't talk much... at least until a few weeks before the end of their senior year when Margo scrambles through his bedroom window, dressed as a ninja, and persuades him to join her on a night of fun and mayhem.

However, the next day, Margo disappears, leaving Q the last person to see her before she goes. She leaves an elaborate set of clues, trying to show Q where she might be - even if she's dead or not.

Along with his friends, Radar, Ben and Lacey, Q must find Margo before she hurts herself. On the day of graduation, they discover Margo is going to spend 24 hours at a particular place before vanishing again, and they race to find her.

Through epic road trips, analysing a particular poem, a change of behaviour and learning how to be the 'wounded person', Q learns that your idea of a person may not be the person they actually are.

This book has made me think a lot with the mystery of Margo's disappearance, as well as Q's musings throughout. However, as amazing as it is, you probably will need to be a little bit older to read this book, due to its language and references and to get the most out of it.