by Lauryn Crum

John Green’s latest book, Paper Towns, takes place in 2008 in Orlando, Florida. In the middle of the night high school senior Quentin Jacobsen’s next door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, wakes him so that they can have a last hurrah to their friendship and their last year of mandatory schooling with a night filled with crazy exploits. Margo Roth Spiegelman is the “IT” girl of school and is notorious for skipping school to go on her own wild adventures, such as sneaking backstage at a Millionaires concert, or learning guitar at a coffee shop in New Orleans, so when she doesn’t show up to school the next day no one is worried; until her parents finally bring in the officials who fail to miss the clues she left behind.

Quentin and his ragtag bunch of band geeks learn of the clues she left behind. Those found in some of Walt Whitman’s poetry, and an anonymous omnictionary entry on the page about Paper Towns, lead them to suspect where Margo has gone. On the day of graduation, Quentin, his best friends Radar, Ben, and Ben’s girlfriend Lacey, go on a twenty some hour road trip, from Orlando to New York. The group encounters many things such as a great white wall of cow, peeing in bottles, and crazy BP runs.

This book is great for the average high school student. John Green captures the sole of a teenager, in all of his books: An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, Will Grayson Will Grayson, and as co author of Let it Snow. John will make you laugh on one page, before turning your emotions around and showing you the rest of the picture on another. Between breaking into Sea World, Walt Whitman, and Breaking Strings, you will not regret reading this book! You need to read this book, and add it to your shelves for several more re-reads!

To learn more about this book and the author visit John Green’s website.

Lauryn Crum is 17 and currently a senior at
Immanuel High School in Reedley. She plays tennis and enjoys fashion.
Lauryn would like to become a psychologist.