I never read The Grapes of Wrath, and I pretty much knew nothing about this book going in, besides that it wasn't published for a long time and John Green likes it. The characters, story, and writing are all very good. It was sad and hard to read at times, and there were some especially dark passages that I wasn't quite prepared for. It's easy to connect these people's struggles to the state of our world now, and makes me tired to think about. But it's a very good book and I'm glad I read it. My favorite line was "What's the matter with me? Picking at death like an old hen pecking apart something too big to swallow."