Paper Towns by John Green

* * * 1/2

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 Q gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.

I have never read a John Green novel, something I needed to correct. My choice was between The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns. As Nat cautioned me that the former would have me crying buckets, I thought starting off with Paper Towns would be a good way to go.

John Green has a fantastic sense of sarcasm and humor - have you seen his vlog?  These highschoolers on the verge of graduation are very much normal and ridiculous.  Quentin is just a great guy. In fact, the entire time I was reading it, I thought to myself how much Nat would love him because he’s just one of those good guys, a forever boy.  His relationship with Margo is an interesting one.  As kids, they discovered the dead body of a man under a tree at a park. Quentin pinpoints that moment as the moment that their friendship changed and she became more withdrawn.

When she encourages him to join her on her revenge campaign against her cheating boyfriend and her lying best friend, Quentin feels it’s finally his chance to get close to her again before they graduate. (It doesn't mean that he's not nervous about what they'll get up to.) It’s almost as if the old Margo is back. Throughout the night he senses something is up with her. After an interesting night of activities they go their separate ways. Quentin thinks that now things will be different between them at school. But then she doesn’t show up to school the next day nor the days after. Turns out she has a history of running away and leaving clues behind. Her parents have given up on finding her and have decided to no longer play her games. Quentin though can’t let it go. He discovers that Margo did indeed leave him some clues and he and his friends decide to try and find her themselves. As all this is happening, Quentin can only wonder to himself who Margo has become, why she is doing this and why he’s obsessed with finding her.

I liked that Paper Towns aside from being about friendship and growing pains was also a neat little mystery. With every clue that Quentin came across, which includes the Walt Whitman poem "Song of Myself", I was trying to figure them out too. There were moments where I was worried about what he’d run into.  And while Margo is missing, life goes on as usual with their friends getting ready for prom and graduation. Quentin’s best friends are concerned about him being too caught up in the Margo mystery instead of enjoying the final few days of school with everyone.  I was bothered by Margo herself because I ended up feeling so protective of Quentin. I was annoyed by her mysterious motives for dragging him into her drama without giving him any kind of explanation.  The poor guy goes through hell worrying about her. He has no clue what is going on inside her head and yet he's still big-hearted enough to want to find her and help her.  Those good guys just get put through the ringer!

I will say that Paper Towns does have a satisfying ending for everyone in the sense that it works for each of the characters. It is about the nature of friendship and how it changes. What do you hold on to and what do you let go of? This is what Quentin has to come to terms with eventually.

~ Bel

Crossed by Ally Condie

* * * 1/2

RULES ARE DIFFERENT OUTSIDE THE SOCIETY

Chasing down an uncertain future, Cassia makes her way to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky – taken by the Society to his sure death – only to find that he has escaped into the majestic, but treacherous, canyons. On this wild frontier are glimmers of a different life and the enthralling promise of rebellion. But even as Cassia sacrifices everything to reunite with Ky, ingenious surprises from Xander may change the game once again.

Narrated from both Cassia’s and Ky’s point of view, this hotly anticipated sequel to Matched will take them both to the edge of Society, where nothing is as expected and crosses and double crosses make their path more twisted than ever.

The driving force behind the first half of the book is Cassia’s search for Ky and her acceptance of her new life away from the Society. Ky on the other hand is undergoing a crisis. Condie shows us a complicated Ky by revealing his back story out of of which arises his cynicism towards the Rebellion. So as Cassia moves in that direction, he is reluctant to ally himself with any one side. Despite his love for her and his disbelief that she chose him, he finds himself insecure and questioning his place in her life and his role as a leader. While Crossed is told from both their perspectives, I felt that it was more about Ky deciding what kind of man he wanted to be.

The things I loved in Matched annoyed me slightly in Crossed. For instance, in Matched, I admired the simplicity of Cassia’s and Ky’s relationship, how their physical intimacy was minimal yet so alluring. In Crossed I wanted more. Even though they were openly more affectionate with each other, they held back a lot. I think I got wrapped up in the Romeo and Juliet of it all and fell in love with the idea of them being together in spite of all the odds stacked up against them. I naively expected it to be easy for them to reconnect and instantly be a couple without fear of the Society. But Condie subtly reminds us that all relationships are a work in progress and need to be grounded in trust. Though Xander is not in the Outer Provinces with them, between Cassia's and Ky's memories, his presence figures prominently only fueling Ky's insecurities. For someone like Ky, exposing his vulnerabilities can be even scarier than some of the harshest things he has had to face in the Outer Provinces.  

Despite that, I still enjoyed it. Crossed once again has that same language that was in Matched. You can see so clearly the reserved mannerisms and behavior. The standout is the new character Indie whose bluntness and quick observations adds some brisk pace to the storyline. She is perhaps the closest thing to “normal” as compared to Cassia and Ky. There is an increased sense of urgency as the Rebellion becomes more amplified. The ending was surprising and hats off to Condie for leaving us with that cliffhanger! 

~ Bel