Title: Turtles All the Way Down
Author: John Green
Rating: 2.5 Stars
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Sixteen-year-old Aza
never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell
Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her
Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So
together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that
separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
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Turtles All the Way Down was a book I really, really wanted to love. And there were aspects that I thought were fantastic. However, the book as a whole was not a major hit with me.
What I did Like About This Book:
* So, John Green has anxiety, and he created the main character Aza as someone who has anxiety as well. I think John Green did a great job of getting the reader into Aza's head and giving others an idea of what it's like to have this severe, sometimes crippling, anxiety.
That's all I really loved about this book. Other than that, I found the book to be kind of pointless. Why, you ask? Well, the book was described as being a kind of mystery-ish book where Aza and her very best pal Daisy go on a little hunt to find the mysteriously disappeared billionaire Russell Davis Pickett. However, after an initial search of Pickett's fenced in yard (that has it's own GOLF COURSE!)
After their little initial search of the property, Aza and Daisy get picked up by the house security guard. Yep, the Pickett's have their own security team. Davis says he knows them, so they are safe. But after that, the search for the father just kind of dies out. So what happens, you ask? Well, Aza reads Davis's blog. Aza and Daisy get in a car accident after what seems to be the requisite teenage drama (like, seriously, whhyy does every book have to have a "You're a shitty friend," "No, you're a shitty friend," drama scene?!) Aza ends up in the hospital for eight days with a lacerated liver, and she's been on a downward spiral because of her anxiety, then she drinks a bunch of hand sanitizer.
The story just felt sort of disjointed and didn't have much development. There were a few oh no moments, but as a whole, the plot was not good.
So, here's my thing: all this blah adds up to a not very interesting read for me. I would have been much more interested in the book had Green stuck to the finding Pickett story line, or made it just a book dealing with Aza's anxiety. But the fact that everything just sort of went splat after the initial hunt down, and the fact that things never really picked up again made this book kind of a dud.
