Reviews with content warning for Grief - Turtles All the Way Down

This story was a heart-warming piece on a young girl struggling with relationships and having to find a way around her crippling mental illness that leaves her feeling hopeless and miserable throughout the book along with trying to solve a local mystery.

I would recommend this book to anyone of any age so they can enter the mind of someone who has a mental illness. This truly brought me back to those times that I was struggling myself in high school with anxiety.

Content Warnings

Moderate: Self harm, Car accident, Mental illness, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Suicide, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Grief, and Cursing

When I picked up this book I thought it was going to be a story full of mystery, however, in good John Green fashion it was way deeper. I have read a number of John Green’s novels, and this is one that I haven’t read. Just like all of John Green’s books, it was a depiction of real emotion and real life. The main character, Aza, is a young girl in high school who quickly shows that she has a severe mental illness that haunts her. Her friend, Daisy, is the complete opposite of her. Daisy loves adventure and trying out new things and can’t completely understand why Aza is the way that she is. They discover that the billionaire in their city was missing and Aza admits that she knows the billionaire’s son. In response, Daisy decides for them that they were going to go over to his house and find the hidden camera that would have detected the billionaire running away from the house. They decide to take a canoe and go to the house and connect to the camera which they managed to find the video and save it. However, they were caught and Daisy decided to smash the boat so that they could have an excuse to see Davis. After seeing Davis, Aza and Davis decided to rekindle their friendship. While trying to rekindle their friendship, Aza and Daisy start looking into researching the disappearance of the billionaire. However, Davis doesn’t want any information found and gives Aza $100k just so she can leave the case be. She splits the money with Daisy but decides that she doesn’t want to stop working on the case. While Daisy is spending her money, Aza is still trying to figure out the case for Davis’s brother. They continue on with life but Aza starts reading Daisy’s fanfiction and quickly discovers that Daisy had created a character that represented Aza that hurt her feelings. She stays quiet for a long while until she and Daisy are going to Applebee’s and Aza starts yelling at Daisy because she is hurt by the accusations which leads to Aza getting into a car accident. After the car accident, Aza has a mental breakdown and ends up on house arrest for a few weeks before going back to school where her relationship with Daisy is healed and they move on with life. Even though Aza wants a relationship with Davis, she also wants to get better so she decides that she doesn’t want to have a relationship. Aza and Daisy go to an art show for their friend and discover that they made it to the last clue Davis’s father had left. After telling Davis, Davis and his brother decide to tell the police and the body is quickly found. This story had a deep connection to me. When I was in high school I had a debilitating anxiety that constantly plagued my mind so to see that written in a book made me feel seen. I could understand every single emotion that was written and I would honestly say that everyone needs to read this book to gain some insight on what it is like to have anxiety.

daybreakreads's review against another edition

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mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I’ve finished 3 other books by John Green and always enjoyed them. This one, not so much. I’m not sure if I would shelve this as YA; it’s teetering on the edge of what should and shouldn’t be normalized for YA. I’d say minimum age is 16-17 because of the questionable sexualized content (without much purpose to the storyline). It wasn’t graphic, just strange to be reading about the details of teenagers feeling each other up and *normalizing* stripping down to their underwear to go swimming when one of them has no guardian/parents. It wasn’t the thing itself so much as the normalization/casualness of it. Like that would be a situation where a lot of teenage girls would be extremely uncomfortable in if not get taken advantage of and I don’t think we should treat it flippantly.

The characters in this drive me bonkers. The main character had zero personality outside of the OCD. Daisy was a terrible friend from the beginning (which increased throughout) and was honestly a liberal SJW stereotype more than any other defining characteristics, and the love interests felt flat and one-sided. I don’t remember this in Looking For Alaska, for example. I wish John Green would give us socially awkward, heavily nerdy characters again.

The OCD descriptions in this are intense. If you have any sort of inclination towards mental illness I don’t think you should read this. I say this as someone who battled it for nearly a decade. Even if you don’t have OCD, you might be susceptible to the problematic thought patterns and/or behaviors described regularly and in immense detail by the narrator.

Aza makes a comment saying she’ll always be this way and that never got corrected or amended later. This was so incredibly sad to me as someone who recovered from OCD (among other things). I know John Green also lives with it, but it is possible to get better and mental illness in general is rarely a lifelong thing. I feel like someone struggling may read that and internalize it, which is another reason I don’t think it should necessarily be YA.

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audriew9's review

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emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book is great for a YA novel. The writing was a little on the nose and at times cheesy. However, if I read this at 16 I would have felt seen and for that this book is amazing. I love the OCD and anxiety representation and often this is not done well.

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squatruhh's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

sarahuwu's review

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emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Relaxed read. Sort of emotional. I really appreciate the depiction of mental illness without just magically “getting better.” I’m not blown away by it but I certainly don’t regret having read it.

Content Warnings

infjkiki's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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paulabekkerus's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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