A review by cateyeschloe
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

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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