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abinthebooks 's review for:
Turtles All the Way Down
by John Green
*2.75 stars
I feel really conflicted with Turtles All the Way Down to be honest. John Green and I have a pretty complicated relationship. I watched the movie adaption of The Fault in Our Stars and it became my new favorite movie. This prompted me to read Looking For Alaska in 5th grade, and I loved it. It became my new favorite book. I then read Paper Towns a year later and liked it considerably less (and liked the movie even less, although Cara Delevigne supremacy). And then I read the book version of The Fault and Our Stars and thought it was mediocre at best.
I feel like all of John Green’s stories are pretty formulaic and follow the exact same characters with essentially the same plot, except the characters have different names and books are set in a different small town somewhere in the Midwest (and I’m here for the Midwest slander because I live here and it sucks ass). As I get older I just can’t seem to enjoy anything John Green writes really. I even disliked the tv adaption of Looking For Alaska that came out on Hulu a few years back, and I think that was a sign that John Green and I’s friendship was over.
However, I’ve heard nothing but praise for this book since it’s release (when I was still pretty young and not reading anything older than middle grade). My expectations going in Turtles All the Way Down were pretty high, considering this book deals with anxiety and I have really bad anxiety. But that was the only thing that was really redeeming in here.
The synopsis for this book is very misleading as the MC doesn’t actually have much of a goal to find a missing billionaire. Actually the MC and her best friend basically drop the plot to find the missing billionaire in question in the first 20% or 30% of the novel. From then on, nothing really happens. Which is fine, because I really enjoy character based stories but I didn’t really like our MC in here. My enjoyment definitely dwindled because I thought we’d be getting a big mystery, but we actually just got a vague mystery with no real impact and a character set story.
Speaking of the characters, yeah I didn’t really like any of them. I think that John Green did a good job of giving these characters personalities this time, but in a way they all still felt like hypocritical, pretentious, selfish assholes (which are usually John Green’s characters in a nutshell). It was fun to see all the Star Wars references which was another redeeming factor in here, and it definitely made me smile. Also I’m just imaging John Green reading fanfiction and I can’t help but giggle at that for some reason.
Speaking of characters again, I really really don’t like Davis. He’s just walking ick, I can’t even describe it. He’s really into famous poets (because of course he is) which made me interested in him at first, but he’s just so uninteresting and he just gives me bad vibes. I also felt no chemistry between him or Aza. Because Turtles All the Way Down is heavily romance based, this definitely took me out of the story because these characters JUST DON’T WORK. Every time they kissed, every time they touched, every time they so much as talked I felt nothing except disdain for their relationship. 0 chemistry was given between the two, and the build up to their relationship was nonexistent.
However, the anxiety rep in here was done really really well. Although I didn’t love Aza as a character, I could still connect with her because sometimes I feel exactly like here. Listening to this book made me kind of hopeful because Aza and I feel similar in so many different ways and it was nice to finally have a character to connect with and understand anxiety. It was nice to finally have an author write a character who has believable anxiety and I felt so represented in this book (obviously it’s going to be different for everyone so I’m not speaking for everyone with anxiety, but I’m just saying I felt very represented in here). The anxiety rep definitely saved this book for me and made me really enjoy this more because of how I could connect with Aza as a character.
However, I can’t really look past the other things I had issues with so I’m rounding this to a 3 stars, but overall a solid read and if you’re looking for good mental health rep, this is definitely the place you wanna to be.
I feel really conflicted with Turtles All the Way Down to be honest. John Green and I have a pretty complicated relationship. I watched the movie adaption of The Fault in Our Stars and it became my new favorite movie. This prompted me to read Looking For Alaska in 5th grade, and I loved it. It became my new favorite book. I then read Paper Towns a year later and liked it considerably less (and liked the movie even less, although Cara Delevigne supremacy). And then I read the book version of The Fault and Our Stars and thought it was mediocre at best.
I feel like all of John Green’s stories are pretty formulaic and follow the exact same characters with essentially the same plot, except the characters have different names and books are set in a different small town somewhere in the Midwest (and I’m here for the Midwest slander because I live here and it sucks ass). As I get older I just can’t seem to enjoy anything John Green writes really. I even disliked the tv adaption of Looking For Alaska that came out on Hulu a few years back, and I think that was a sign that John Green and I’s friendship was over.
However, I’ve heard nothing but praise for this book since it’s release (when I was still pretty young and not reading anything older than middle grade). My expectations going in Turtles All the Way Down were pretty high, considering this book deals with anxiety and I have really bad anxiety. But that was the only thing that was really redeeming in here.
The synopsis for this book is very misleading as the MC doesn’t actually have much of a goal to find a missing billionaire. Actually the MC and her best friend basically drop the plot to find the missing billionaire in question in the first 20% or 30% of the novel. From then on, nothing really happens. Which is fine, because I really enjoy character based stories but I didn’t really like our MC in here. My enjoyment definitely dwindled because I thought we’d be getting a big mystery, but we actually just got a vague mystery with no real impact and a character set story.
Speaking of the characters, yeah I didn’t really like any of them. I think that John Green did a good job of giving these characters personalities this time, but in a way they all still felt like hypocritical, pretentious, selfish assholes (which are usually John Green’s characters in a nutshell). It was fun to see all the Star Wars references which was another redeeming factor in here, and it definitely made me smile. Also I’m just imaging John Green reading fanfiction and I can’t help but giggle at that for some reason.
Speaking of characters again, I really really don’t like Davis. He’s just walking ick, I can’t even describe it. He’s really into famous poets (because of course he is) which made me interested in him at first, but he’s just so uninteresting and he just gives me bad vibes. I also felt no chemistry between him or Aza. Because Turtles All the Way Down is heavily romance based, this definitely took me out of the story because these characters JUST DON’T WORK. Every time they kissed, every time they touched, every time they so much as talked I felt nothing except disdain for their relationship. 0 chemistry was given between the two, and the build up to their relationship was nonexistent.
However, the anxiety rep in here was done really really well. Although I didn’t love Aza as a character, I could still connect with her because sometimes I feel exactly like here. Listening to this book made me kind of hopeful because Aza and I feel similar in so many different ways and it was nice to finally have a character to connect with and understand anxiety. It was nice to finally have an author write a character who has believable anxiety and I felt so represented in this book (obviously it’s going to be different for everyone so I’m not speaking for everyone with anxiety, but I’m just saying I felt very represented in here). The anxiety rep definitely saved this book for me and made me really enjoy this more because of how I could connect with Aza as a character.
However, I can’t really look past the other things I had issues with so I’m rounding this to a 3 stars, but overall a solid read and if you’re looking for good mental health rep, this is definitely the place you wanna to be.