User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
this full review is now POSTED at https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...!!
john green fangirls, do your worst. you do not scare me. i am definitely not extremely frightened and emotionally fragile right now.
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Well, well, well. John Green. We have to stop meeting like this.
By “like this,” I mean: you write a book, I read it, I hate it. Wash, rinse, repeat. Every time! This is lucky number seven! I don’t think it’s working all that well for either of us. For me, at least, it’s definitely getting a little old.
But here we are. I keep using the weird brag/justification of “Yes, I hate John Green, and no, it’s not because I haven’t read (insert The Fault in Our Stars or Looking for Alaska or Paper Towns here) yet, because yes, I’ve read all of his books, and yes, the reviews are in, and yes, it was absolutely all bad.”
Except for the “the reviews are in” part. Because I haven’t really reviewed any of them. I wasn’t on Goodreads in 2006 my dear boy. It has Not been a decade of these shenanigans.
And so, as I continue to use that line of defense against his wildly loyal, unaging group of geeky manic pixie dream girls in training, I continue to argue myself into reading his books. And oh boy do I suffer in return.
This is, unfortunately, not a The Fault in Our Stars type situation. (Never thought I’d be disappointed by something differing from The Fault in Our Stars!!)
I can’t just write a review of this that is, speaking generously, 92% me quoting the book and being like “hahaha can you believe this is just a normal average sentence in this totally real book.” (Although there will be a lot of that because HOW CAN I RESIST. I’m not a superhero.)
This book is not just John Green using cancer as an excuse to make teens fall in love with each other in a way that is profound and sad, or John Green using a missing person to make teens fall in love with each other in a way that is profound and sad, or...using another missing person to make teens fall in love with each other in a way that is profound and sad.
Oh sh*t, oh wait, this book DOES use a missing person to make teens fall in love with each other in a way that is profound and sad. Hahahaha. What is it with John Green and missing people??? We’re Looking for Alaska. We’re tearing this Paper Town apart to find Margo.
Hang on, I’m getting a phone call. What? It’s official? I’m the funniest person on Earth? I knew that tearing paper/Paper Towns joke would push me over the edge. Sorry, first runner-up John Mulaney!
So. Back to the point I lost roughly a thousand years ago. Even though this book DOES contain some terrible overwrought pretentious writing, and a manic pixie dream romance, and a missing person, that’s not its Thing. Like the Thing of The Fault in Our Stars is cancer/death/sadness, the Thing of this book is mental illness. Specifically a combination of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Which John Green has. This is #ownvoices for anxiety/OCD! Rad.
It makes the whole review-writing thing a tad more complicated though. Because, like. I didn’t like this book. Not because of the mental illness rep. But I can’t just exile the whole book to Garbage Island anymore. Because the rep is good.
My life is
so hard, you guys.
The fangirls are going to come for me so bad.The mental illness rep was good. But also it was still a John Green book and I strongly disliked the process of reading it and, in fact, was forced into a reading slump so hard that it feels like while I was reading this my brain was gently removed from my skull and replaced with a small mound of cotton balls.
I have still not recovered.
Let’s do some categories, yeah?
Also: this book needs a huge huge huge
huge huge huge HUGE trigger warning for self-harm. I don’t know why I haven’t seen that mentioned more. I don’t consider self-harm a trigger for myself and I still had to take breaks while reading this.
THE PLOT, ALLEGEDLYWell.
There isn’t one.
This book has excellent mental illness rep, yes, but it is still a John Green book and that means there is not a plot so much as there is “let’s listen to the every thought of some very unbearable and introspective teens for a few hundred pages, shall we?”
All of this overwhelming pretension and analysis and over description of basic inanimate objects comes at a cost, and that cost is a little something I like to call “not being excruciatingly bored.”
I read this book on Overdrive, which has that handy-dandy little feature where you can see the proportion of the book you’ve read in a neat lil percentage. By the 5% mark of this book, we have read exclusively about a single lunch period in the life of our protagonist, Aza, which, we are told eight hundred times, is 37 minutes long.
Five percent.
Thirty-seven minutes.
I’m just going to close out this section here because there is no way I can make it any clearer than that.
IT’S NOT EVEN ORIGINAL YOU GUYS SERIOUSLYEven though this book feels infinitely long, it is actually only 288 pages. Which is why it’s impressive that this sh*t not only feels unrelentingly verbose, but also unbelievably repetitive.
For example, one of my favorite inexplicable tropes crops up about nine hundred and seventeen times in this book: Teenage Characters With Sh*tty Cars That They Humorously Name And Love With All Their Adolescent Hearts. What a wild cliché!
Our protagonist, Aza, has a dinky little car named Harold. This is one of the only jokes in this whole book, and let me tell you there is some dark sh*t and the comic relief is NEEDED. (This is me attempting to be generous as I wonder why John Green could possibly have included so many iterations of the exact same joke.)
It’s not just the Harold joke. It’s also the setting of Applebee’s, where our characters go one hundred times, the only joke being the exact same premise of how funny it is that they are there, using a - hahaha you guys get ready, I really don’t think you’re prepared for how funny this is - a COUPON!
The Applebee’s staff hates them, guys. I mean, are you serious? A coupon? In an establishment often predicated on deals and savings? Get out of here, you zany teens. You’re too much.
Similar to this is the unrelenting onslaught of Details About A Rich Person’s House. Davis, the son of Missing Person Who Makes Teens Realize Things About Love, and also Subject Of Occasional Love When Necessary For Pretentious Pondering, and also Source Of Much Of Pretentious Pondering, is rich as hell. The (innumerable) descriptions of his home sound like 13-year-old me trying to depict teen pop sensation Justin Bieber’s home for a fanfiction I would never even research, let alone complete.
I’ll spare you the wondering: I was not good at writing fanfiction.
THE LANGUAGE GOOD LORD THE LANGUAGEHere’s the thing. I know a lot of people love John Green for his writing. I am not one of those people, obviously, for the established reason that I find him unbearably pretentious, but many of them exist.
But like. Why, guys? Why do you love him? This book could be a master class in the use of the passive voice. I use the passive voice all the time, but a) every professor and teacher I’ve ever had has kindly asked me to f*cking stop immediately, and b) I’M NEITHER A WRITING PROFESSIONAL NOR RENOWNED.
But enough of that. Let me just do a liiiiittle bit of quoting. Just to show you guys that I’m right about how pretentious and overwrought and unnecessary it all is. It’ll be a Google Translate type situation: I’ll write the phrase in normal human English, and then we’ll translate it into John Greenian.
Ceiling lights ->
“fluorescent cylinders spewing aggressively artificial light.”He drove faster ->
“He accelerated with the gentle serenity of the Buddhist Zen master who knows nothing really needs to be done quickly.”Fun, right?
Also, here’s my FAVORITE THING. So there’s this passage in the book when Aza goes,
“I was out of school for two weeks. Fourteen days of my life reduced to one sentence, because I can’t describe anything that happened during those days.”So how many sentences do you think came after that? Zero, right? Aza clearly says the whole thing was reduced to one sentence.
GUESS WHAT.
GUESS THE HELL WHAT.
It’s followed by several paragraphs of description.
Sometimes it’s just too easy.
Anyway, I could keep quoting and quoting these increasingly unbelievable sentences but what would be the point? I hate the way this is written and some people love it and here we are. At an impasse. Not even a bad impasse. (Here’s where I should have said some sh*t like And yet not even an impasse worth solving - an impasse of opinion, which is also called life, or something like that. This is all, to me, sentiments alternately ordinary and slightly off disguised under the massive weight of gaudy phrasing.)
NOTHING MAKES SENSE. WE’LL ALL BE DEAD SOMEDAYHere’s one of my favorite categories! Tiny things that bother me almost as much as the bigger things some might say “actually matter.”
Like, for example, in what world is a security guard responsible for the retrieval of Dr Peppers for quirky teens? (Which is also coincidentally the name of the charity I’m starting, or at least my band.) That security guard’s salary had best be bigger than God’s.
Also, this is literally so over-described that John Green forgets his own descriptions. “He was wearing his school polo shirt and khaki pants.” Next paragraph: “He had skinny, sunburned legs and knobby knees.” SORRY AZA, DID HE TAKE HIS GODDAMN PANTS OFF? DID HE? I’M SORRY, I MUST HAVE MISSED THAT BETWEEN DISCUSSION OF AN IMMORTAL REPTILE OR WHATEVER. PLEASE GO ON.
And I just want to put this passage here and see if anyone else craves the sweet sweet oblivion of unconsciousness after reading it:
“The most recent quote was, ‘He who doesn’t fear death dies only once,’ which I thought was maybe some veiled reference to his father, but I couldn’t unpack it. (For the record, he who does
fear death also dies only once, but whatever.)”Okay actually I can’t just let it sit there. Are you KIDDING ME. Is this a deliberate misinterpretation of the quote??? Is this on-purpose dumb??? OBVIOUSLY THE MAN WHO FEARS DEATH DIES MORE THAN ONCE BECAUSE HE CAN’T STOP IMAGINING HIS OWN DEATH! To use your own words, John, it’s a goddamn metaphor! It makes sense to put the killing thing between your teeth or what f*cking ever but that eloquent af classic piece of prose is nonsense to you??
Sometimes even I’m surprised by how much this stuff grinds my gears.
TEEN TALK! WITH A PRETENTIOUS MIDDLE-AGED MANA lot of this book lacks the let’s-talk-about-the-evolution-of-the-universe-and-then-the-afterlife-if-there’s-time-to-spare mentality of most John Green teenage dialogue, but it does Not lack the polished, complete thoughts with that exactly one (1) witticism to every two (2) statements ratio.
Let’s just put some quotes in.
“Last night I lay on the frozen ground, staring up at a clear sky only somewhat ruined by light pollution and the fog produced by my own breath - no telescope or anything, just me and the wide-open sky - and I kept thinking about how sky is a singular noun, as if it’s one thing. But the sky isn’t one thing. The sky is everything. And last night, it was enough.” Like, have you ever in your godforsaken life read a more perfectly, quintessentially John Green passage than that one? It’s too good.
“At the end, when walking was work, we sat on a bench looking down at the river, which was running low, and she told me that beauty was mostly a matter of attention. ‘The river is beautiful because you are looking at it,’ she said.”Here’s a clip of some texting convo for y’all:
“Him: Then what am I? What is anyone?
Me: I is the hardest word to define.
Him: Maybe you are what you can’t not be.”
You know. How teens text!
And then, just when you’re thinking “oh, maybe John Green just does pretentious dialogue now. Maybe we’ve escaped the unrelenting yoke of the quirkiness of his characters, the unbearable cringe-inspiring relatable -” he cuts you off in the middle of that thought with this sh*t:
“You are like pizza, which is the highest compliment I can pay a person."God, that’s just...it’s hard to keep going after that one. Is this a Forever 21 graphic tee from 2011? What is
happening right now?
I’m going to google “Cody Ko pizza” to soothe my weary soul. I suggest you do the same.
Anyway, it’s safe to say John Green really “gets” teens, you guys! He understands ’em. I mean, when was the last time you met a teen whose ideal date wasn’t “wandering a freezing cold park, sitting on a bench, and cavalierly mentioning the beauty of the river, only to be well actually’d by their girlfriend about the nature of aesthetic appreciation”?! I know I can’t remember!
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL JOHN GREENThe beginning of this book was…not John Green-y. Which, as someone who has declared the aforementioned man my nemesis, is a complete positive. But rather than being pretentious and overwrought and all of those things that make John Green John Green, it was boring. At least passionate hatred isn’t boring. So the introduction of highbrow philosophies related in their polished entirety about a fifth of the way through was almost a relief.
I’ve already quoted way too many of those highbrow philosophies, though. Either you’re masochistic enough to read the book or you have had Enough Of That.
A lot of this was not typical John Green, but also so much of it was??? The Missing Person thing, for example. Also the classic Uniquely-Named Friends With One Quirk, One Of Whom Is Not White. In this book, we got Daisy Ramirez, Mychal Turner, and Davis Pickett. I read this five months ago so I might be wrong but pretty damn sure everyone’s heterosexual af. The not-white friend is not the one who occasionally kisses our white protagonist (which is to say, this romance is Caucasian As Hell). You know. Just a touch behind on the diversity memo, outside of the excellent neurodiversity.
But also John Green might just not remember how to be John Green, considering that
“Daisy’s self-proclaimed life motto was ‘Break Hearts, Not Promises.’” Really, John? You could get that sh*t on a 75% off clearance graphic tee for like four dollars. It’s been done. That’s the best you can do??
It’s like I don’t even know who you
are anymore!
IN WHICH I TRY TO BE NICEI have two nice-ish things to say.
One, I liked this quote:
“He’s in that vast boy middle […] The whole problem with boys is that ninety-nine percent of them are, like, okay.” Extremely true and real.
My other kinda-nice thing is also very irrational and super unfair: I wish that John Green wrote a memoir about his particular mental illness. Because I hate this book for what it is, but I didn’t hate that part of it.
IN WHICH I REMEMBER WHY I REALLY, ACTUALLY HATE JOHN GREENI’m going to close this out with the only part of this book that made me actually furious. All the pretension and boring-ness and overwrought language and whatnot is all fun and games to me. But there’s a part of this book that is so resoundingly f*cked up, it made me actually angry. Here it is.
“Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or booze or God they thought would save them. […] Adults think they’re wielding power, but really power is wielding them.”F*ck this. F*ck this passage. I am not here for this Peter Pan adolescent-glorification egotism. Every single face you see in your entire life is representative of a person who has lived a life. Who has suffered. Just because we don’t all do it while spewing eloquent bullsh*t about constellations and speaking in half unknown literary quotations doesn’t mean we’re all cogs in some machine. We all live and think and feel. Maybe this is the thing I hate most about John Green: the glorification of the “weird” to the detriment of the “normal.”
It’s this blatant superiority (including this mocking of alcoholism as if it’s not just as much a mental illness as those of the characters in this book) that makes John Green absolutely unbearable to read.
And so, gang: I think he and I are done. And I can’t say I’m too upset about it.
That’s my bottom line.
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PRE-REVIEW
actual review to come
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NOTE: i know what "turtles all the way down" means, i know that the spiral holds significance, and i know that this cover is still full-on ugly. please do not feel obligated to explain to me the wonderful intricacies i am missing. the only thing i am missing is my vision, because this cover is so ugly it blinded me
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yes i am already biased against john green, but can we agree that this cover is straight up UGLY???
and also:
(i borrowed my sister's computer to say this)
Rating: really liked it
“You’re deflecting.” I just stared at her. “You’re right that self isn’t simple, Aza. Maybe it’s not even singular. Self is a plurality, but pluralities can also be integrated, right? Think of a rainbow. It’s one arc of light, but also seven differently colored arcs of light.”
This is difficult to rate. Looking back, there were definitely certain aspects that I thought were done well, but I just didn't enjoy either the story or the uber-philosophical writing. Given that I consider three stars to be a mostly positive rating, I'm going with two.
Turtles All the Way Down is really only for those looking for
deep cell-level evaluation of human consciousness and personhood. To give him some credit, Green captures Aza's needling anxiety and compulsions very well. That little inner voice of doubt that causes you to question things you
know until maybe you're not so sure is spot on. It's everything else around Aza's inner turmoil that feels like what it is - filler.
It could very easily have been an interesting portrait of OCD and anxiety, but attempts to add a bizarre subplot of a missing billionaire (who is also the father of her childhood friend, Davis) don't disguise the fact that nothing really happens. I am not opposed to an introspective novel, especially in YA contemporary dealing with mental illness, but I cannot figure out why the author decided to add such a disjointed and nonsensical side story to the mix. Unless, of course, it is yet another "deep metaphor" for the nonsensical nature of anxiety, but I would have found Aza's story far stronger without it.
The ludicrous and boring plot acts as a superficial backdrop for Green to play out the usual
"super precocious teens having philosophical conversations." Aza's mental illness and Green's philosophy bleed together into statements that are straddling the line between clever and nauseating:
I guess I just don’t like having to live inside of a body? If that makes sense. And I think maybe deep down I am just an instrument that exists to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide, just like merely an organism in this . . . vastness.
I had very little patience with hipster teens being hipster back when I was the age of these characters; I have even less now.
I don't know why Green has to create such annoyingly unrealistic carbon copies of himself. Even secondary characters like Daisy quickly become annoying - calling Aza "Holmesy" in literally every sentence she speaks is extremely irritating. And these text messages between Aza and Davis:
Me: You’re not your money.
Him: Then what am I? What is anyone?
Me: I is the hardest word to define.
Him: Maybe you are what you can’t not be.
Me: Maybe. How’s the sky?
Him: Great. Huge. Amazing.
It's not even right to say these characters don't talk like teenagers because that makes it sound like teens can't possibly be this smart (and they definitely can), but these characters just don't talk like any people I've ever encountered anywhere. Of any age. They sound like what I imagine old buddhist monks to sound like.
Green takes steps toward exploring the painful reality of living with a mental illness that deeply affects your everyday life and wellbeing, but it's sad that he pulls it back into the land of pretentious philosophical mumbo jumbo. For a while there, it felt real to me, and then it just became John Green talking to himself about the universe and the nature of "self". I guess I have to accept that early John Green - the kind who wrote Paper Towns - is a thing of the past.
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Rating: really liked it
I’ve been having a bad run with YA lately. I’ve loved it for so long that I persevere on, remembering that there are gems, that there are treasures, but increasingly I’ve found myself worried - have I grown out of it? Have I overdone it? Each novel seems to be repeating some unspoken pattern, or at least trying to make something new out of the same ingredients. It was with trepidation, then, that I wandered in to Turtles All The Way Down, thinking “yes, I’ve liked John Green books in the past, but maybe that was before I had grown tired of the same ingredients.” … NOPE. IT’S GREAT. YA IS ALIVE AND WELL.
Like always, I’m thankful for Green’s refusal to dumb anything down. He treats his teenagers like adults because they are adults, or nearly are, and at the very least deserve the same respect as adults. When we are introduced to Aza’s life, and her way of living it, nothing is hidden. Her anxiety and mental health continue to be an unrelenting problem in the narrative because they are an unrelenting problem in her narrative. It doesn’t ease up, it doesn’t get fixed, and at times it is nearly physically painful to read about a sad girl who can’t get better. You do just want to reach into the pages and give her a shake, or a hug, and tell her to please get better. But that’s the point. She can’t. Or not forever. And that’s okay. Because she’s still lovely and wonderful and loved.
I have a particular love for the ending. My dad and I agree that watching a good movie is more fun the second time. Now you know that every thing is going to be all right and you can just relax and enjoy it. I went into the ending so nervous that it would be cheesy, or unrealistically hopeful, or really unnecessarily sad. I was so surprised by an ending that moved on from being a teenager, looked at a life beyond teenage hood, that I nearly cried. I nearly cried because not enough teenagers hear that what they’re going through truly matters, but also that they'll be leading a completely different life very soon. It was something I told my brother constantly when he was still in high school and I had gone on to University and suddenly had to try and remember how hard high school had been.
A note on technology: I feel very strongly about the use of technology in YA. It frustrates me to no end when a teenager “leaves their phone at home” or “runs out of data” or “doesn’t think to text someone something time sensitive.” It isn’t the way that teenagers function, it doesn’t make any sense, it ignores a huge part of the way that teenagers understand themselves and each other, and can you tell that I really care about it yet? John Green does the impossible here: he manages to include technology organically, to make it important to the story and to their lives, but without making it gimmicky. For that, I am also thankful.
Finally, I am thankful for this representation of mental health. It is ugly, sad, disturbing, frustrating, but not hopeless. It isn’t everything (even though sometimes it is) and it’s honest. I am so happy, so unbelievably happy, that kids and teenagers and also adults will have this. That they will read it and feel understood, or empathize, or both. You know how we always want books to “make us better people”? To “show us new perspectives we couldn’t imagine”? Pick up Turtles All The Way Down.
Full disclosure: I read an early version of the book and worked with John Green and his editor, and my name is in the acknowledgments! The posting of this review is unrelated to the work I did!
Rating: really liked it
The ShortTrigger warnings: anxiety, OCD
Writing: 5 stars
Characters: 4.75 stars
Plot: 4.5 stars
Originality: 4 stars
(all out of 5 stars)
The LongIt's hard to believe I just read a new John Green (JG from now on) book. My mind can't really wrap around that. (Especially given where I was 5 years ago, not even knowing BookTube existed, now I can't imagine my life without BookTube and being Hailey in Bookland). But it was a pleasure to read his writing again. He is extremely talented. I was super nervous going into this admittedly. After the smash success of TFIOS I couldn't imagine a more high pressure situation. Especially as I haven't absolutely loved all of his novels, I just didn't know where this one would fall for me. But I'm so happy that I loved it. It's definitely my favourite YA book on mental illness that I've ever read.
What sets JG apart and makes him, IMO, a pioneer in the YA genre, is the fact that he writes knowledgable teenage characters. He doesn't discount teenagers as unintelligent due to their developing brains. He recognizes that teenagers, IRL, are able to comprehend complex concepts. (This may seem obvious, but I read a book on writing books for young readers recently and it emphasizes the fact that you have to use the most simplistic language possible so young teenage minds can understand it. BS. Teenagers are not dumb).
Because of this, his characters are so startlingly relatable. I think Aza is an especially relatable character for me with her struggles with anxiety. The way JG describes her experiences with anxiety spoke to me so intensely. Specifically the metaphor of the spiral. Blew my mind in all honesty. JG definitely has a talent for metaphors, I never get sick of it. He's always had a way of finding the perfect words to describe that which seems indescribable. Seeing him use this technique regarding mental illness was fascinating. I think if you do, or ever have, suffered from mental illness, you will vastly appreciate his narrative.
I found this story to be very different than JG's other novels. Not in a bad way at all, but the plot was much more subtle. There are two plots happening simultaneously really, one internally and one externally. You think you're following the one and then it turns out the other is the central focus. The way the two were interwoven was genius.
I think this has been written in a way that will appeal to both the next generation of YA readers as well as the aging generation of YA readers. Typically JG's novels have the romance as a main focal point, and they really are some of my favourite romances, but here the romance takes a back seat. The front seat is occupied by Aza's own personal mental health journey. It was such a nice change. (That's not to say there is no romance, it's there but it's just not the main topic).
Overall, this made me SO happy that John Green is returning to the world of YA. It was the most authentic representation of mental illness I've ever read and I'm so glad I went in with an open mind. You can tell he is writing about something he's extremely familiar with. I can't wait to see what he comes out with next (I hope he has plans to write more!)
Rating: really liked it
Even though I just finished this book, I already know it's one that will stick with me for years to come. I can't fully express how cathartic this book was. I finally saw parts of myself represented in a novel - the parts that I was ashamed of and pretended didn't exist. This is by far my favorite John Green novel. I can't say much more about this because I'm still sobbing over it. Just read it, please.
Rating: really liked it
My review is now up if you’d like to watch: https://youtu.be/T3t7Fhh2oiM
I’m speechless. It’s stunning.
Rating: really liked it
2 Stars...and that's me being generous.This book was, well...not good.
I went into this with somewhat high hopes.
I knew it was about a girl with anxiety issues and - as someone who struggled with a lot of anxiety as a hormone-ridden, depressed teen who lost a parent at a young age myself, (much like Aza) I expected to really connect with this story.
At least on
some level.
One reviewer I follow even ranked this as her top read of 2017. Said it was "life changing."
LIFE CHANGING.
To each their own and all that jazz - truly, I'm happy other people got something out of this book -but, in my opinion, for something to change my life - or at least remotely affect me in any way - it has to have at least
some depth to it.
And this book had about as much depth as the shallow end of the kiddie pool.
Now, I realize that I - a 35 year old woman - am not the targeted demographic for this book, but still...
There has to be at least
some point to a book.
Character development...a cool plot...a semi-decent romance, even...
But this book?
Had basically no plot.
No true character development that I can see...
And perhaps the most simplistic "moral of the story" I've ever seen.
So let me save you a few bucks or a trip to the library and just give you what amounts to the entire point of this book here:
Ready?
*drum roll*
*drum roll*
*drum roll*
*drum roll*
*drum roll*
*drum roll*
Life Goes On.Yep, that's pretty much it.
Life.
Goes.
On.
Rating: really liked it
Let us play a little game called "What could this book possibly about?"
First off, we can argue a bit about the setting. His early work would suggest that he prefers warm places, but over the years he has slowly migrated to the Midwest.We can assume that this time it will be set on the sun, for the conditions are best for cultivating our feels, and destroying our hope.
Next, we can examine the characters. They must be the perfect combination of witty, socially awkward, beautiful, and of course, burdened with a great amount of tragedy and overwrought with pain. I'm guessing ex-convict and clown. Good pairing
The plot is tricky, you see, for this varies greatly book to book. The spectrum is quite wide. I'm going to guess it'll be a complex story that weaves together the lives of the ex-convict who becomes the first great poet in years, and the young circus clown who keeps having dreams of the constellation Hercules. Yes, this sounds about right. I think they will need to save the world from llamas.
And the romance. One mustn't forget the romance. All you really need to know is it will break your heart.
So, if I have guessed correctly, this book will be about a past criminal mastermind and a clown, living on the sun. Together they will stop llamas from taking over the universe.
Or, y'know, worst comes to worst and it's twilight fanfiction.
Whatever it is, I'm sure we will I CAN'T,"ASFJSDFLK" and feel all of the feels.
UPDATE: So, we have a title. This is
clearly about wimbleton and its philosophical after effects.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 STARS I REALLY REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK.
If I leave this review blank for now, I may force myself to film a video review (which I really want to do!) hahah
Rating: really liked it
Rating 3.5 “Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.”
Well, this is awkward.
I went into this thinking I wouldn’t like it. Heck, I went into it pretty much expecting to dislike. And yes, I know that’s a horrible thing to say, and a terrible reason to read a book, but come on, you can hardly blame me.
I hated The Fault in Our Stars, with all of its extremely pretentious characters (although I did cry at the end, and actually liked the movie). I then left Looking for Alaska, halfway through after a friend spoiled the ending (thanks a lot, Megan!) I also couldn’t get past chapter five of Paper Towns, (mostly because I had already seen the movie and hated Margo).
So, Turtles All the Way Down, was me giving John Green one last shot. And you know what? I liked it. I actually, genuinely liked it.
This book is classic John Green. You got the two teenagers from well to do families who sit around contemplating the meaning of the universe with all the knowledge and wisdom of college philosophy professors and the vocabulary of a SAT test book.
And yet, in spite of all of these things, I actually enjoyed this one. Maybe because Aza and Davis didn’t come across as annoyingly pretentious as Augustus and Hazel had.
So, the story is about Aza, a girl dealing with spiraling thoughts that are entirely out of her control. She feels trapped and bullied by her mind as her anxiety takes over. And yet, she tries her best to be a good friend and daughter and to live the life she wishes she had.
It’s also about Davis, a billionaire boy with a missing father, who is trying his best to be a good influence for his 13-year-old brother.
It’s also about mental illness and family and friendship and falling in love. Really, it’s about a lot of things, but more on that later.
I think John Green does an excellent job at portraying Aza’s illness and the way that thoughts can sometimes control a person. I know firsthand how hard it can be to deal with invasive thoughts. I know that sometimes the mind seems like a different entity from the self and John Green wonderfully showed all the thoughts going through her head. More so, he did it in a way that properly displayed mental illness.
I liked the romance also, although at points it was a little too philosophical for my taste. I liked that love doesn’t fix mental illness. I liked that the world goes on and good things happen and sometimes bad things happen. I also like the way that mental illness is portrayed as affecting not just the individual but also those around them. I loved seeing how family and friendships are tested and yet remain. Truly, I think that it was all brilliantly done and I must say, kudos to John Green because I could actually relate.
So, why not a higher rating? Well, this book felt like it was trying too hard. It was too many things. It took a great story and stretched it out to the point that the plot seemed thin. It felt out of focus and it greatly diminished my liking of it.
I think it could have had a greater emotional impact if it had focused on only one thing, either Aza and her troubles, or Davis and his missing father. It could either be a look into mental illness or a mystery. Or, it could be both if it were longer and found a way to combine the two. But, alas, it did not.
Overall, I really enjoyed it and totally recommend. I am actually looking forward to whatever John Green writes next.
Let me know what you thought!
Rating: really liked it
"Anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.”
Rating: really liked it
4.4/5 Stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
“You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.”
GUYS GUYS! I FEEL THE FEELS I FEEL THEM! GUYS!
This book this FUCKING BOOK. I devoured it in under a day! I couldn't leave it down even though I had studying to do. I was there, with Aza, feeling what she was feeling, understanding even though I don't suffer from it, wanting to "heal" her even though I know I couldn't. This book was so deep (too deep for teenagers but that's John Green for ya) and it entailed so many excellent quotes that cut deep into me. The other characters were brilliant, too (even though Daisy just pissed me off at times), the Star Wars references were cute, being a SW nerd myself, I relate (even though the Rey x Chewbacca parts were sort of weird) and I think he did his research a lot for this book. 6 years is a lot of time and he really produced amazing work out of them.
I'm so looking forward to the movie I heard that is coming out, (a John Green book not becoming a movie would be a first) I hope they do it justice. It was the first of his books I read before the movie comes out not because of the movie so I'm really curious to see what their angle will be about it.
ANYWAY, I'LL PROBABLY BE THINKING ABOUT THIS BOOK FOR A WHILE SO K BYE!
Rating: really liked it
"You're a we. You're a you. You're a she, an it, a they. My kingdom for an I."I hate when I have a middle of the road review to write; I like to feel passionately about a book one way or another, and I almost feel it is easier to share my feelings on a book that is a 1-2 star than any of the 3 stars that come along. I feel at a loss for words to describe my experience while reading this book; I've seen multiple reviews state they felt Turtles All the Way Down wasn't even on the same level as The Fault in Our Stars, and I have to agree. While this wasn't a BAD story per se, it didn't feel up to the John Green standard we've come to expect. Multiple times I was stopped by randoms at the gym asking how it was, because it was on their wish list, and I could never muster anything more than "This book is fine. Fine is what it is. It is not great, but it is fine" and I felt guilty for that.
For such a short book with big font and little chapters and lots of spacing between lines, this book sure was slow in the first half. I believe he was going for atmospheric, but when I think of setting the tone in a slow building way, I think of descriptive writing that can be filled with prose or not, but definitely something that draws me in and makes me feel a part of the story, and that's not what happens here. The narrative is very jerky and disjointed, and it took awhile for my brain to become engaged enough to care what was happening. I think the premise of this book, minus the billionaire side story (but I'll get to that in a minute), was excellent. I love YA books featuring mental health issues and illnesses and this was by far the strongest aspect of the plot. I didn't find Aza likable in the beginning, but I feel that was the point so that we could form a connection with her as she grows and becomes aware of herself in new ways.
Honestly, I really could have done without the awkward side story of Davis and Noah's missing father. I didn't feel it added to the story; actually, I felt it took away from some of the more important factors since it stole coverage where those pages could have been used to further the main focus. I couldn't help but wonder what felt off, and I think it came down to a rushed characterization of Davis, Aza, and their relationship. It almost felt as if chunks of the story were missing and we were just supposed to fill it in our own way. I would have liked a little more development, but that's just me. I did feel the ending was another strong point; it was messy, uncomfortable, and slightly disturbing, but added a gleaming spark of hope and a viewpoint of recovery for those struggling with various mental health issues and disorders.
Please don't toss this book aside and chose not to read it just because it didn't wow me; I think it has some very valuable insight into a very tough subject that is still taboo in 2017. There are plenty of 5 star reviews that are much better than mine and I hope you enjoy it more fully than I did. Maybe I'm getting too old for this type of YA contemporary or maybe I'm just out of touch with how teenagers behave and converse, so I think I'll just say that it was fine, but the over hyping of this book pre-production may have done more harm than good for the die hard fans.
Rating: really liked it
'anybody can look at you. its quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.' oh my gosh. oh my gosh. oh my gosh. i now forgive john green for making me wait 5 years for a new book because this was perfection. honestly, my new favourite of his. i know john green stories tend to be a hit or miss with people, but there is no denying he can write. i loved all the intricacies, and poetic sentences, and overall warm feeling of this book.
i also really appreciate the personal side of this story and could really feel a difference with this book compared to his pervious works. i think greens own struggles with OCD just made the book all the more genuine and honest. and because of this, there couldnt have been a better portrayal of thoughts for a main character who suffers from anxiety and specific triggers.
i thought this was so well done and i loved everything about it!
↠ 5 stars
Rating: really liked it
When Melinda and I did an event with John Green in New York a couple years ago, we knew we had to bring our youngest daughter, Phoebe, along. He is one of her favorite authors, and she’s converted our entire family to fans of his books.
Before we went on stage, John pulled Phoebe aside to share a secret with her: the plot of his new book. He made her promise not to share it with anyone, and she stayed true to her word for nearly two years. She wouldn’t even tell Melinda and me!
Phoebe doesn’t have to keep the secret any longer, because that book—
Turtles All the Way Down—was released late last year.
I’ve read a couple of John’s books and enjoyed each one, and his latest is no exception. Turtles All the Way Down tells the story of Aza Holmes, a high school student from Indianapolis. When a local billionaire goes missing and a $100,000 reward is offered for information about his disappearance, she and her best friend decide to track him down.
Aza’s quest is complicated by the fact that she has obsessive compulsive disorder and severe anxiety. Her struggles are a huge part of the book, as her compulsions constantly get in the way of her social life. John’s writing feels almost claustrophobic when describing Aza’s mental swirl. Some people might find those parts difficult to read, but he really gives you a sense of what it feels like to live with OCD.
Because this is a John Green novel, romance must factor into the equation. Aza begins to develop feelings for Davis, the son of missing billionaire Russell Pickett. He is initially skeptical about her intentions, because he’s used to people sucking up to him to get close to his dad. While I hope I’m nothing like the morally bankrupt Russell—he wants to give all of his money to his pet lizard and was under investigation for fraud and bribery—I think my own kids can relate to some of Davis’ experiences.
John actually talked to Phoebe in New York about what it was like growing up with me as her dad. I asked her to write up her own mini-review now that’s she had a chance to read the book. Here’s what Phoebe had to say:
“For years I have been a loyal John Green fan—devouring his novels in the back of coffee shops, while traveling, and curled up on my couch. Something about the imagery of his books makes me get caught up in the fantasy of his stories, but
Turtles All the Way Down hit closer to home for me than the rest. As someone who has struggled with OCD for years, I saw some of myself in the main character. But more than anything, this book struck close to home due to the intriguing character of Davis.
“Never has a book been able to capture so well what it is like to live in the shadow of someone else’s legacy. This story shows how Davis struggled to find his own identity outside of his father’s fame and wealth. Although we have very different relationships with our dads, I recognized his struggle, which also plays into my own life as I find my way in this world. This read was captivating like none other I have read before.”
Phoebe is much closer to John’s intended demographic than I am, but I think readers of all ages will enjoy
Turtles All the Way Down. It’s a fun, moving story filled with quirky but relatable characters.
Paper Towns is still my favorite John Green book—but my family loved talking about
Turtles at the dinner table, and I think yours will, too.
