Peter Tarkoy

Peter Tarkoy
Paper Towns
John Green
Mystery(?) Novel
Just Right
Finished (Pg. 305, finished on 12.05.10)

1. To give a recap of the entire book... Quentin A.K.A "Q" lives in Florida, with his friends Radar and Ben. Margo Roth Spiegelman is a girl who lives next door to him, who used to have a crush on him when they were both ten years old. Now they are 17 and in their senior year of high school. Q has become fascinated with Margo Roth Spiegelman ever since he was ten years old, but now, Margo is in the more "popular" crowd, and she is just seen as a paper girl (I will explain more about that later) to him. One special night, she climbs into his window with eye-paint and a dark mask on and says "Come on Q, lets take your car, I'm grounded". It turns out that Margo had an entire night of pranking planned to get revenge on the friends that betrayed her. Q spends all night, until 5 AM playing pranks with Margo. One of these pranks being going to her cheating boyfriend's other girlfriend's house and stealing all his clothes while they were having sex, forcing him to run across the lawn naked. The night continues... The next morning, Q being excited to see Margo at school, he discovers she is gone, she has run away. The police don't take interest in the case because Margo is an adult, so she has every right to do what she wants. Q spends the rest of the book looking, exploring, finding information to look for her. He finally discovers that she was hiding in a fictitious town called "Algoe", which was made up to prevent maps from being plagiarized*. Anyway, the book spends the last 50 interesting pages describing the journey with Ben, Ben's girlfriend, and Radar to New York state to find Margo.
2. I think this was the best book I have ever in my entire life. The above description couldn't possibly show all the great things about this book. Having just looked it up on Wikipedia, I saw that it was awarded the 2009 Edgar Allen award for best Young Adult novel (cite). I couldn't agree more. One specific reason for why I loved the book was because it wasn't boxed in with language and topics. There were countless swear words, and other things that normally wouldn't be in a book. I'm getting really used to reading books like this. Cherub was like this, and this was so amazing.
3. I honestly don't know what to call this theme, but the best way I can describe it is "Relationship Changes". I could definately see Green setting his tone about relationships. His opinion was that you really don't know somebody well enough to like them from afar. Five different relationships changed during the book, all using this tone that Green set in the summary on the inside-cover. I saw this theme everywhere, it was what the book was based on. The major place I saw it was with Q's and Margo's relationship with each other. Throughout the time that Q had been looking for Margo, he realized from much closer that she was this supreme rule of the universe that he idolized she was. This theme greatly affected the characters because it changed them, from beginning to end. Q did things he would never do before this happened.
4. My favorite character is Radar. He is funny and serious at the same time. But, he isn't just some other funny and serious guy, he has a weird background. His parents are extreme fanatics about Black Santas. Radar's family is black, so his parents want to promote that Santa, and all other famous fake figures, aren't always just white. Anyway, I found his situation in the book unfortunate, but I laughed so hard when I read parts like "IT'S NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS HAVE THE WORLD'S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS". I was laughing like a book has never made me laugh before.
5. My least favorite character is Margo Roth Speigelman, because she was extremely self-centered, and only ran away to "be alone" without telling or informing her parents where she was or if she was ok. I also didn't like the fact that when Q finally found her, she was complaining that "I wanted to be alone, not for you to find me", and that "I missed you" so her opinions are contradicting.
6. Since I finished the book, I can't give a prediction, but I can give it a 10 out of 10 rating.