…no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again
I have never liked anything by John Green. But I loved Turtles All the Way Down. It is so amazing!
Book Review: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Rating:
Title & Author: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Genre: Contemporary, Drama
Release Date: october 10 2017
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Dutton Books
Synopsis
Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
I give Turtles All the Way Down by John Green five out of five hearts because I loved it. I have anxiety issues myself and found it very nice to see that even this can be portrayed well. I recognised a lot of my things in this novel. But also the way John wrote it kept me stuck in my seat reading.
Aza is a girl that has issues, she has been feeling all her life as if she is not real. I know that feeling, btw. And her mother has thought her that if she pinches herself she can test if she is awake. Which goes on to become an obsession for her. She breaks open the pad of her finger to check that, but she has also developed a severe case of Hypochondriasis, because she of course has the wound there always. Which she needs to controle too. I understand her so well. I understand being so anxious that you just try and find a way of dealing with it, by imagining you have a disease or you are not awake, etc. I have been so anxious that I worried I was dead and ended up like Professor Binns from Harry Potter, dead but going on with life as if nothing happened. John Green wrote it so realistic that it was easy to see how she became the way she was.
Daisy is the best friend who has to put up with Aza’s issues. She knows her friend has issues, but instead of talking to her friend face-to-face about it she deals with it by writing a bad character in her Star Wars fanfiction. I think she feels real because of the things she does, she feels hurt because she can not help her friend, but wants to. But she also is fed-up with it, because dealing with an anxious person becomes annoying and is very hard!
The only thing that I feel that the author did not address by the end of the novel is why she had these thoughts, like wondering if she even was real. I know that thoughts like that might be caused by other mental diseases, so maybe her anxiety is caused by something else that she has and needs to deal with. And could have been talked about.
The story overall is really well written and developed. The author seems to know what he is writing about and I could not find any flaws in the symptoms of Aza’s OCD and her anxiety disorder. The only issue that I had I spoke of before. I loved this book and if John Green ever releases a novel again about mental health I want to read it again. I like them better than the drama in things like The Fault in Our Stars, which I didn’t like at all!
Let me know what you thought of this book!
If you have any requests for which book I should talk about next, please let me know in the comments down below.
For now, let books enrich your life!