If a cartographer saw their secret fake “paper town” on another map, they could be fairly certain that the designer had copied their design without permission. It was an early form of copyright protection. Basically, if you’re designing a map (back in the days before Google had Street View), you’d sneakily add in an extra fake town in a random spot. If you’re wondering: the idea of a “paper town” is actually an old cartography trick. I wasn’t a huge fan of the characters or the plot, but the “paper towns” trivia was pretty fun and it made a nice little backdrop for the story.

He uses that very car to drive across the country chasing after the girl, risking life and limb, with nary a thought to his heartbroken parents… only to find that she’s absolutely fine and, well, that’s kind of the end. Q skips his high-school graduation (and somehow convinces his friends to do the same), despite the fact that he is an only child and his parents are so excited and proud of him that they bought him a car. It was a lovely moment (I guess), but then the selfish teenage arsehole characters went back to acting like selfish teenage arseholes. Red flag, readers: our narrator is definitely a Nice Guy TM. “It struck me as somewhat unfair that an asshole like Jason Worthington would get to have sex with both Margo and Becca, when perfectly likeable individuals such as myself don’t get to have sex with either of them – or anyone else for that matter.” Paper Towns That’s funny, right?! So I keep reading along, chuckling away… until we hit the first speed-bump of self-indulgent teenage wankery. I laughed out loud at the story of local figure Dr Jefferson Jefferson, who is actually not a doctor of any kind – he’s just a powerful, wealthy man who petitioned the courts to change his first name to “Dr”. There were some surprisingly clever and funny bits. Still, that’s what Green chose for a plot, and I’m hardly in a position to argue with him. I mean, I’ve never met a teenager with enough foresight to leave complex metaphorical breadcrumbs when they run away, and, indeed, why would they? The whole point of running away is, y’know, to not get caught. You have to suspend your disbelief for a minute here. Margo goes missing, and Quentin goes looking for her, following her trail of clues. She is (surprise, surprise) beautiful, mysterious, and edgy. The nerdy, underappreciated boy-next-door (Quentin “Q” Jacobsen) “loves” Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar for years. There’s a prologue positioning the two central characters as childhood friends. Paper Towns is your standard coming-of-age story. (Help a girl out: making a purchase through an affiliate link on this page will send a small commission my way, at no cost to you!)

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