Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska

I read about John Green, a young adult author, and decided to try some of his books. I wrote about An Abundance of Katherines earlier this summer. I just finished Paper Towns, and although I read Looking for Alaska a while back, just realized that I did not write about it.

Quentin is about to graduate from high school when his old friend and neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, shows up at his window in the middle of the night. She has a long list of pranks that need to be done before daylight and needs his help. From shaving off one eyebrow of his arch nemesis to breaking into Sea World, "Q" helps Margo execute her perfectly planned schemes, ending up on the top of a building looking out over the lighted city. Margo comments that she is tired of "paper towns."

When Margo does not show up for school the next day, no one is surprised due to the fact that she has been know to take off for several days at a time. But as graduation looms nearer, Margo does not return, and the FBI talks to Q, he gets more and more concerned. Determined to try to find her, he searches her room for clues and begins with a much-highlighted copy of Leaves of Grass. Afraid that she has committed suicide or maybe even met a worse fate, Q and his friends start deciphering the clues that they believe Margo has left for them. What follows is a delightful, yet tension-filled search for Margo, including breaking into abandoned buildings, following trails to failed subdivisions, and finally a road trip to New York, searching for a "Paper Town."

Miles has moved to Birmingham, AL, to a boarding school, where he is promptly hazed, taped with duct tape, dropped in a pond, and left to drown. When Miles gets himself out of this predicament, his new friends Chip, his roommate, and Alaska, the girl that everyone falls in love with, immediately swear revenge. What follows is a delightful story of boarding school pranks and continual "getting even." Over the course of the semester, Miles and Chip get closer to Alaska and gradually learn the depths of her unhappiness. In a surprise twist in the plot, Miles and Chip are left on their own looking for Alaska.

I am now a John Green fan, and I highly recommend Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska for both adults and older teens.