Book Summary and Review

In the book Paper Towns, by John Green, on one Florida day, two nine-year-old kids were playing in the park. The birds were chirping and the sun was shining. But also, a dead body was decomposing. The kids, Quentin Jacobson and Margo Roth Spiegelman, run home to tell their parents. Quentin wants to push the whole finding-a-dead-body thing from his mind, but Margo finds out the man killed himself and wonders why. Nine years later, Margo Roth Spiegelman, now eighteen, comes to Quentin's window in the middle of the night. They haven't hung out since the day that they found a dead body when they were nine, but now Margo needs a favor. She needs Quentin to drive her around on a spree of revenge against Jase Worthington, her cheating boyfriend, and anyone else who annoys her. They vandalize houses and cars with spray paint and fish, then sneak into SeaWorld as their last crime of the night. Quentin is excited that he and Margo are friends again, but she never comes back to school. Quentin believes that Margo Roth Spiegelman has run away from home, and is leaving him clues to her whereabouts. With his friends, Ben and Radar, Quentin investigates a paper trail left by Margo, including her highlighted copy of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, that leads them to an abandoned mini-mall. When the trail goes cold, Quentin worries that Margo Roth Spiegelman's body has gone cold too. What if she committed suicide just like the man they found nine years ago? Quentin eventually discovers that she is still alive, and will be in Agloe, New York on May 29th. Of course, Quentin discovers this on May 28th, so he and his friends skip their high school graduation to race to Agloe, a "paper town" that doesn't exist on any map. It was created by mapmakers as a plagiarism detection tool. Someone built a general store in the general area of Agloe, and Margo Roth Spiegelman has been living there. When Quentin finds her, she tells him that she never wanted to be found, and she doesn't want to go home. She's going to find a new home and try to figure out who she really is. Quentin realizes that he's idolized and been in love with a girl he doesn't really know, and now that he does know her, he has to let her go.