Review: Paper Towns by John Green

I am having the worst luck with books by John Green. This is my fourth book by him now, and the third one that is a two star for me. What. I'm unsure how this is happening, because I really truly loved The Fault in Our Stars. But these other three books, oh, I have not loved them even one bit. Which is disappointing.

But will say, though, that Paper Towns was my favorite of these three bad books. I had more fun reading this one. But I also had more feelings about it, which means that I got a whole lot more angry about certain things. Will share all my thoughts about this book. Sigh. But even so, I'm still glad that I gave reading it a try.

I'm unsure where to begin. Because I did enjoy reading parts of this book. At first I liked Q a whole bunch. And I liked Margo in the beginning as well. The first part of the story, where Q and Margo has a big adventure in one night was all kinds of fun. And I really liked reading about the revenge they did, because most of the people deserved it. And it wasn't that brutal, lol. And I just liked reading about Q and Margo together. But then that night ended. And the real story began. And oh, I'm so sad to say that the real story bothered me a lot. Anyway. This book is told from the point of view of Q. He's almost done with high school. And he has loved Margo, his neighbor, all his life. They were friends when they were younger, but that stopped when they grew up.

The plot in this book is about the night Q and Margo spent driving around town messing with the people who had hurt Margo. And in the beginning of this book I really enjoyed that. I liked reading about their night together, and I liked getting to know Margo a little. And I liked Q a lot in the beginning too. But then that night ended, and Margo ended up missing aka having run away. And then Q starts obsessing about finding her. He finds clues she has left behind for him, clues that had too little information, to be honest.

Q has a few friends, like Ben and Radar. I'm unsure what I really felt about these boys. For most of the book I did not like Ben at all. I hated the way he talked about girls sometimes. It was not fun. And he had some really weird jokes that I also did not like. I did enjoy reading about Radar, though. He was a pretty awesome friend. Ben was too, sometimes. But, well. Q was not a good friend. Like Colin in the Katherine book, Q was fully selfish. Claiming his friends didn't care for him, when he was the one who did not care.

His friends helped him search for Margo. Despite how Q was being a terrible friend back. And I guess that is the biggest reason for why I did not like this book. His friends were awesome. He was not. Q was simply obsessed with finding Margo. And I did not get why at all. I was curious about her at first, and I liked her in the beginning, but as the book went on I did not like her at all anymore. Learning new things about her was not fun. The way Q was acting all the time was not fun. This was not a fun book to read.

But I did like some parts of this story even so. Like the road trip that happens at the end of the book, with Q and Ben and Radar and Lacey. I liked that a lot, for the most part. A few things were a bit too silly, but the road trip was still fun. It just lasted too short. And what happened when the road trip was over just bothered me oh so much. I didn't like this ending, to be honest. What is most surprising is that I did not want a happy ending in this book. So depressing. I kind of wanted Margo to be dead, like they feared.

But anyway. Another big reason for why I really disliked this book was because of how very obsessed Q was with finding Margo. This book takes place in around a month. And he is a bit crazy. He spends so little time with his friends. He didn't go to prom with his friends. Then at the end he even skips graduation because of trying to find Margo. All of that was simply not okay. She was not worth it. That bothered me so much. And I ended up not liking Q or Margo. But yeah. Book wasn't all bad. But it was not good either.

Big thank you to Penguin Random House International for letting me take part in this very awesome John Green read along. And for sending me this stunning paperback box set of his books. Despite not really liking this book, sniffs, I'm still glad that I gave it a try. It's not my genre at all, but I have loved a bunch of books from this genre even so. But yeah, Paper Towns was not one of these books. I guess others might love it. But I did not. And I'm okay with that. If you do read this book, though, let me know your thoughts.

Goodreads - The Book Depository - Amazon