Paper Towns by John Green

The book Paper Towns by John Green is an interesting account of how what we see is not always as it appears. Quentin Jacobsen is a seventeen-year-old living in an Orlando-area high school. He has been in love with his childhood best friend, Margo Speigelman, his entire life. Quentin is an intelligent boy and Margo has a reputation for being tough and cool. When they were nine years old, he and Margo made a discovery that changed their lives forever. While walking through a park, they found the body of a man named Robert Joyner who had killed himself. Fortunately, Quentin’s parents are therapists and he made it through that tragedy an could live a well-adjusted life with few risks and little drama. 
A few weeks before high school graduation, Margo appears at Quentin’s window in the middle of the night. This surprises him greatly for they have not talked in a very long time. She asks him to accompany her on an all-nighter of pranks. She goes on to explain that she is on a rampage of revenge that includes spray paint, blackmail, breaking into Sea World and leaving catfish in people's cars. Quentin thinks that this night will bring him closer to Margo as friends. However, Margo vanishes the day after their adventures.

Quentin turns to his friends Radar and Ben, and to Margo’s friend, Lacy, for help in an attempt to find her. They eventually skip their high school graduation and go on a cross-country trip to find or “save her” for they believe they found Margo's suicide/bread crumb trail in volume of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Quentin thinks she left this to him so that he could find her body. Along the way, Quentin realizes that Margo is not really the person that he thought he knew. Their  journey takes them to the supposedly nonexistent town of Agloe, New York. When they find her they learn that she neither wanted to be found nor wants to return home. 


Reviewers have noted Green’s deft hand describing the social challenges of the culture in this part of Florida with its heat, overdevelopment, and temptations. Critics also admire Green's memorable and unusual characters in this slice of Florida life.
Other books by John Green: Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Kartherines, Will Grayson, and Other Stuff (this is really the name of the book)