YES.
THIS BOOK MADE ME CRY.
I mean, it’s a John Green novel. And I have been in love with the way he writes for like a few hundred years now or whatever, and it’s been 5+ years since The Fault in Our Stars – his last book.
I haven’t been able to put it down, stop reading, tweeting quotes from it – this rarely ever happens to me.
Turtles All The Way Down – really hit home on so many levels
This book made me cry, because I finally saw parts of myself being represented in this book. And it’s not the nice, sweet cute and funny parts of me. It’s the parts of me that I am most ashamed of, terrified of. The parts of me that I never had the courage to talk about. The parts of me that I’ve been concealing and pretending didn’t exist.
John Green humanized the monster I’ve been living with for a while now.
He gave it a voice, and he made it seem human. He reminded me that I can be stronger than the voices in my head.
And the ending – damn, no spoilers, but I LOVED the ending, and I hated it and I LOVED it and just askjdaslkfjhawlfhaweilufhadslkjbaajakdfbjeh!!!!!
I need to sit down.
I’m speechless.
John Green writes in a way that echoes into your mind. He writes in a way that, as a writer – I’m constantly bench-marking my work with.
Aza Holmes, the protagonist, doesn’t just speak my thoughts – she lives them.
John Green is probably the only author who can make you fall in love with a book, even before you start reading it.
I used to think The Fault In Our Stars was my most favorite John Green book, but it’s now dropped down to a close second, because Turtles All the Way Down won me over from the very opening line of the book. I’ve been obsessed with this read for the following reasons:
- John Green writes this book from the perspective – an excruciatingly real perspective – of a girl with anxiety.
- It’s a book about fierce female friendships.
- Davis Pickett is such a brilliant character
- The book is rich with metaphors and poetry.
- JOHN GREEN WRITES THE WAY HE SPEAKS, HAS ANY ONE ELSE NOTICED THIS?
I’m actually floored by how much this book means to me because it talks about something that I’ve been battling myself – Anxiety.
Aza Holmes, is a girl who is pretty much locked into her own thoughts and her own mind. To me, she’s the most beautifully written character in all of 2017. I read most of this book commuting between home and work, and I had some seriously hilarious moments. I had some seriously emotional moments.
By the time I got to the climax, I was fighting my tears – nobody died, but then Aza’s anxiety gets way out of hand, and I could just feel it so personally.
I could see what her mother was going through – because my mother has been through the same. I could see why her best friend was so over protective of her, and at the same time why she gets so irritated with Aza – cause my friends are exactly the same.
[ S/O to all my insanely over protective friends, without whom I wouldn’t have lasted a day in the city.]
Here’s the blurb:
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.
In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
I love the aesthetic of her name.
Aza begins and ends the alphabet.
I know! So beautifully thought out, right?
Confession – the book did stroke my own anxiety a bit.
There is this one scene – at the hospital, where Aza drinks hand sanitizer cuz she’s terrified of germs, I mean – I know I’m not supposed to give out spoilers, but that was the part of the book where it just got way too real for me.
It was a part where I had to put my kindle down and cry my eyes out, and take in a few deep breaths before I could continue, because I could understand how real it was.
How friggin infuriating it must have been for Aza, to not find a way out of the ever tightening spiral of her thoughts.
I loved it, but once I was done, I was aware of how someone else out there understands what it’s like to live locked inside your whirling, ever tightening thoughts. I will forever be indebted to John Green for making me feel a lot less lonely.
The recurring theme of this book is missing. This is another reason I love this book, because ‘missing’ is a feeling that is very personal to me. I find myself constantly missing people, missing memories, missing home, sometimes – even missing the demons I’m not supposed to be missing.
The book is about people missing people.
And also,
Missing people.
Aza misses her dad.
While her love interest, rich sad boy – Davis Picket’s millionaire father is actually missing and the cops are on the hunt for him.
“To be alive is to be missing.”
“I get that nothing lasts. But why do I have to miss everybody so much?”
“And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realize you’ll eventually lose everyone.”
“I would never slay the dragon, because the dragon was also me.”
“I knew that my crazy was no longer a quirk, a simple matter of cracked finger pad. Now, it was an irritation.”
“I don’t mind worriers,” I said. “Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.”
“You’re both fire and the water that extinguishes it. 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.”
“Sometimes I wondered why she liked me, or at least tolerated me. Why any of them did. Even I found myself Annoying.
“And even though I laughed with them, it felt like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, like I was watching a movie about my life, instead of living it.”
“I wasn’t possessed by a demon. I was the demon.”
“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice on the matter.
– A few quotes from the book that capture the essence of anxiety.
John understands human emotions with such high precision. He comes up with brilliant metaphors and poetry that capture the essence of Aza’s mental health.
I read the book on my kindle, and I have got highlights on every single page.
It’s no secret that John writes such perfect sentences. Such beautiful, accurate sentences that can only come from someone who feels things deeply, and has first hand experience in the things that he writes about.
Right from the beginning to the end, you are not reading a book about a girl with anxiety.
You’re living it.
John takes you into her head. I don’t know if they’ll ever make a movie out of this book, and I am highly skeptical of how it’ll turn out, because it’s such an internal book – if that even makes any sense?
You get to experience what it’s like to be anxious, you get to experience the monstrous compulsions of OCD when you read the book. [Interesting how John never uses the term OCD in the whole book, but you KNOW what he’s talking about.]
This book is such a short read. It takes around two to three hours – a standard 300 page John Green novel. But at the end of the two hours, you will find yourself being enveloped by an existential crisis of sorts.
I don’t think I’ll be able to love another book for a while now.
Turtles All The Way down isn’t just a wonderful book.
This is an important book.
XOXO,
Bala ❤
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