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A review by bhnmt61
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
5.0
I read Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars several years ago, and although I enjoyed them both, they seemed slightly....... coy. That’s the only word that I could come up with to describe their just-this-side-of- sentimental plots. About halfway through this book, I found myself thinking WOW. This is the book he was meant to write. The others were just practice. It’s not perfect— there’s a lot going on and it occasionally bogs down. But it felt more real to me than those others.
So it surprised me just now when I read another reviewer say that they love those other two books and this book seemed ‘coy’ by comparison— that exact word. And other reviewers who gave it one or two stars because it was boring and unrealistic. No book is for everyone, but this one seems especially prone to extreme reactions. Try it yourself. It helped me understand mental illness—Aza’s and my own milder version of it— in a way I hadn’t before. And I was definitely not bored, I finished it in two days.
Maybe part of the reason I enjoyed it so much is because just last week I listened to John Green’s interview with Kate Bowler on her podcast Everything Happens, where he discusses his own struggles with mental illness. Great interview. And great book.
So it surprised me just now when I read another reviewer say that they love those other two books and this book seemed ‘coy’ by comparison— that exact word. And other reviewers who gave it one or two stars because it was boring and unrealistic. No book is for everyone, but this one seems especially prone to extreme reactions. Try it yourself. It helped me understand mental illness—Aza’s and my own milder version of it— in a way I hadn’t before. And I was definitely not bored, I finished it in two days.
Maybe part of the reason I enjoyed it so much is because just last week I listened to John Green’s interview with Kate Bowler on her podcast Everything Happens, where he discusses his own struggles with mental illness. Great interview. And great book.