The cover of Paper Towns

Paper Towns

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life–dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge–he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues–and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

Paper Towns debuted at #5 on the New York Times bestseller list and won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery. It is taught in many high school and college curricular, often in conjunction with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which is an important text within the novel. The movie adaptation of Paper Towns was released in Summer 2015 starring Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne, and directed by Jake Schreier.

Average Ratings: 4.0/5

Book Information

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published Date: 2009-09-22

Page Count: 336

Price: $14.99

Accolades: Winner, The Edgar Award • An ALA BBYA title • A Booklist Editor’s Choice title • An SLJ Best Book of the Year • A VOYA Editor’s Choice title • An Amazon Top Ten Books for Teens title • A Chicago Public Library’s Best Books title • An NYPL Book for the Teen Age

Reviews

  • There are echoes of Green’s award-winning Looking for Alaska (2005): a lovely, eccentric girl; a mystery that begs to be solved by clever, quirky teens; and telling quotations (from Leaves of Grass, this time) beautifully integrated into the plot. Yet, if anything, the thematic stakes are higher here, as Green ponders the interconnectedness of imagination and perception, of mirrors and windows, of illusion and reality. That he brings it off is testimony to the fact that he is not only clever and wonderfully witty but also deeply thoughtful and insightful. In addition, he’s a superb stylist, with a voice perfectly matched to his amusing, illuminating material.

  • A suspenseful mystery, a compelling central metaphor, and one of those road trips that every senior hopes he or she will have round out this exploration of the kind of relationship that can’t help but teach us a little bit about ourselves.