Book Review: "Turtles All The Way Down" - John Green

Hi Steemians!

Today I'll be reviewing on of my most recent reads, a Young Adult novel called Turtles All The Way Down by author and youtuber John Green.

(picture credit: Goodreads)

The book follows a 16-year-old girl called Aza Holmes, who suffers from OCD. The plot is pretty thin but it follows her, her friend Daisy and another friend called Davies, whose dad is a billionaire who got involved in a scandal and has disappeared. Daisy and Aza endeavour to find him for the promised reward, through which Aza grows closer with Davies and the two develop something of a relationship. However, Aza's OCD proves very difficult to deal with and puts a strain on the relationship.

While this certainly isn't any kind of literary masterpiece, I had quite a fun time reading this. If you're able to suspend your disbelief in the characters and plot... well, this is actually quite a cute book.

John Green tends to write books with teenage main characters that are better versed in poetry than most adults and spout language no one at the age of fifteen/sixteen/seventeen would ever seriously use. I honestly am wondering at this point why he insists on exclusively writing about teenagers, when he so clearly doesn't actually want to give them a teenage persona. Not that such a persona is exclusively made up by the language they use, but I honestly feel like if he wanted his MCs to be so intellectual and jaded and world-wise, why not try his hands at an adult protagonist for a change? Just a thought.

Then again, you probably couldn't get away with so little plot in an adult novel. Or maybe you would, but I honestly doubt it. This book reads like an exposé on OCD, with a few alibi shreds of plot wrapped around it. It's fine to want to write about a specific thing, but there still needs to be some sort of story.

As I already mentioned, the plot in this one particularly felt very weak and somewhat pointless. At the beginning, Aza and her friend Daisy suddenly and for no apparent reason other than DEM MONEYS feel the need to involve themselves in a missing person's case. They find some arguably useful pieces of information pretty quickly, and then go back to doing absolutely nothing besides reading police reports over and over and over. About 20 pages off the end, JG realizes he still needs to solve this "mystery" and so there we are. The End. Excuse me for being underwhelmed.

The characters also leave much to be desired. Daisy is the only slightly interesting one, while Davis and Aza are as stereotypical as they come. Particularly Aza actually has no personality beyond her OCD. I know from personal experience that mental illnesses can sometimes get so bad they completely overshadow someone's real personality, and this is definitely an idea that Aza herself struggles with heavily in the book. However, I still don't think it's enough to simply give your character an illness and then be done with it. There could have and should have been so much more to her than that.

Even though it might seem like a have a lot of issues with this book (and objectively speaking I do), while reading it none of these things bothered me overmuch. The critical side of my brain was noticing them but the rest of me was just having a fun time with a cute book and cute characters. Plus JG's writing is definitely quite lyrical at times, even though it doesn't always fit in.

Overall, if all you're looking for is a cute book with OCD rep, go for it. Just don't expect too much.

Have you read this book? What did you think? Let me know!

Happy reading!
xx
ivymuse