Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

34 reviews

casira's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

2.5

I didn't have a good time with this. It was meandering and it didn't always seem entirely sure of what it was trying to say. The ending was very "love is the answer to everything" in a way that didn't seem to truly address most of what the rest of the book was about? And the characters were a bit insufferable. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Chronic illness, Self harm, Mental illness, and Panic attacks/disorders

Moderate: Car accident and Vomit

chelseeaa's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Grief, Abandonment, Suicidal thoughts, and Self harm

Moderate: Death, Blood, Death of parent, Vomit, and Cursing

chrissssssss's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Chronic illness, Panic attacks/disorders, and Mental illness

Moderate: Death of parent and Eating disorder

jbaysinger_1069's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Chronic illness, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, and Dysphoria

cateyeschloe's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

Wow! I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did.

Oftentimes, YA doesn’t appeal to me as much as other writing styles, and I even more rarely really enjoy romantic subplots. My appreciation for the author as a person is what drove me to finally pick up one of his novels, and I am so happy I chose this one!

Turtles All the Way Down tackles the complexities and intensities of mental illness – like OCD and Anxiety Disorder - and the ways we handle them. John Green is a pro at writing about topics like these in a real-world, lived experience way. It is not romanticized or demonized. It is nuanced and complex, constantly evolving while sometimes feeling suffocating in its stagnation. 

Aza often experiences major bouts of anxiety, anxiety attacks, and panic attacks. Numerous times throughout the book she’s asked “What are you afraid of?” and her responses are often all too relatable.

When Aza tells her therapist that she’s scared and her therapist asks what she’s afraid of, Aza responds,

“‘It’s not like that. The sentence doesn’t have, like, an object. I’m just scared.’”

One of the realest sentiments in the novel to me, as someone who lives with anxiety every day, is 

“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.” 

Aza grapples with derealization, often feeling as though she isn’t actually “real”, as though maybe she’s just an illusion, that intense detachment from reality to the point where your own idea of “self” feels alien and unnatural. 

“‘… if you can’t pick what you do or think about, then maybe you aren’t really real, you know? Maybe I’m just a lie that I’m whispering to myself.’”

This is a super relatable and understandable feeling to me, and I found it so refreshing to see these thoughts and feelings laid out in such a crystal clear way. I also really appreciated the sentiments that Aza eventually became comfortable with and accepted toward the close of our story.

“‘You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.’”

The very fact that we worry whether or not we are real is an implication itself that we are, in fact, very real.

This book had a great pace and John Green excels at story-telling and giving you opportunities to relate to and attach to the characters. Even so, I wasn’t prepared for how much he ramped up the emotional weight that was the ending of this novel. It was beautiful, it was heartbreaking, and it was everything I could have asked for. The reality of living with mental illness isn’t a perfect happy ending – it’s surviving it and living alongside it. 

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes from the book:

“You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Chronic illness, and Death of parent

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Car accident, and Self harm

Minor: Blood

supercat_earl's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Chronic illness, Panic attacks/disorders, and Self harm

jonesroni638's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Chronic illness, Mental illness, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Death of parent

Minor: Car accident

asen123's review against another edition

challenging emotional tense 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

4.0

It was pretty good  book. If you have the tendency to fall into spirals of obsessive thinking and depression, you might be triggered by the raw detail of it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Mental illness, Self harm, Panic attacks/disorders, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Car accident and Death of parent

alexiconic's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

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

3.75

The question this book raises is: how many stars does a book get for its (good, relatable, rarely well done) depiction of mental illness? I think this was for me the biggest strength of the book. And maybe … when it comes down to it, it’s what made it a good book at all. 

Because the representation of OCD in this book is really, really good. It is confronting to see thought spirals portrayed so well. And it was great to see this without any blemish or polish. For my taste, however, too much of the book was about the continuing and worsening spirals, and the (sometimes a little obnoxious) existential wondering included. I guess that’s where this is a YA novel and I am no longer a teen, but it’s a little dramatic. It also made the (at most 50 pages-long) realizations and “recovery” too sudden, too rushed, and unfortunately the book lost some strength here. Yes, it is difficult to write how taking medication regularly will suddenly improve your mental health. But if 3/4ths of the book have been about the hell of the symptoms and the worries about taking meds, it would have been nice to have a bit more analysis. And while the end resonated with my own mental health experiences, it seems counterintuitive and is not often seen and that is exactly why I would have loved for the last 10 pages to last a bit longer. 

I just wanted a bit more time in the story. A bit more time for the cool sidekicks. A bit more time for the OCD and for recovery. In the end, though, isn't that also a good sign? 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Death, Medical trauma, Self harm, Death of parent, Chronic illness, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical content, and Mental illness

Moderate: Abandonment, Child abuse, Body horror, and Blood

bookburdy's review

hopeful informative sad 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Death of parent, Self harm, Vomit, Dysphoria, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical content, Mental illness, Car accident, and Chronic illness