Will Grayson Squared VS Paper Towns

On my journey to read all John Green's work, I encountered Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Both are books I've read in the last 2 or 3 months. While both of them have their own unique and distinctive attributes, I still think that John Green has repeated patterns on all of his work that I find rather uncomfortable: all the main characters are males who are displeased with their own lives and choose to retreat from human interactions until their best friends/ girlfriends pull them out of their bubbles. It got pretty monotonous by the time I read the 4th book from Green. The flow of the stories become predictable, partly because I read his work simultaneously, one after another.  

However, that's not the main reason I write today. I'm writing to tell you my thoughts on Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Paper Towns. Let's start from the more obvious and easier part: deciding which one I enjoy more between the two. And the awards goes to..... Will Grayson, Will Grayson. 

Will Grayson, Will Grayson tells the story of 2 boys with identical names leading entirely different life. But at least they both are similar in some ways, like how frustrated they are with themselves and how they both are tangled with the soft-hearted, and not-so-tiny Tiny Cooper. The first Will Grayson is straight, and is bestfriend with Tiny. The other Will Grayson is gay, and later becomes boyfriend with Tiny. The rest is about the journey of their love life and the progress they make with the environment that surrounds them. It's about how they cope with loss and lies, and how they find peace with themselves, enabling them to fully live in the now. It's all about trials and errors, and trials; finding the 'it' that worthes all the errors and the fallings. Tiny Cooper, as a character and a loyal sidekick, is a fresh and essential addition in the story that makes Will Graysons (yes, plural) less annoying and more relatable. Overall, I could really devour the story John Green offers and was willing to sacrifice my lunch time to read it. 

Paper Towns, on the other hand, didn't leave a deep impression to me. Well, besides the impression that the main character is a clingy, self-centered person, who blindly chases after clues that turn out not to be real clues after all. He's turning his own life upside down in search of a girl next door who doesn't really want to be found, or wants to be found but too ashamed to admit it. All the pseudocities and all the midnight readings, trying to read between lines and all the pretexts, all for what purpose? In the end he gets the girl he wants and though they part ways, the end signifies a new journey for the hero and heroine, and in my imagination there's a future for both of them after the book reaches its final page.

In the end I still think that John Green is an outstanding writer with abilities to play with his readers' emotions. He writes with younger audience in mind, as his characters are all in high school, but he doesn't write about cheesy romance. Instead he writes about many issues and pressures related to youngsters and his books are always open for discussions and full of hidden meanings waiting to be discovered. John Green isn't all about The Fault In Our Stars, he's more than that, and I found that out only after I've read 5 books of his.