Kai Spellmeier's Reviews > Turtles All the Way Down

“You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.”

I went into this with a bowl full of low expectations but with a side of high expectations. And it tasted good.

It's been a while since John wrote a book. The first John Green book I ever read was TFIOS, which I loved. During the time that passed until the release of Turtles All the Way Down I caught up with most of his other books, apart from An Abundance of Katherines. Will Grayson, Will Grayson was meh but Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska straight up sucked. It made sense that I was torn whether I wanted to read TALWD or not. But I'm glad I did.

The plot wasn't all the exciting. I saw lots of people complain about an absence of plot, but some stories are more character-driven than others, as in this case. Apart from this, there were lots of subplots that I loved - Daisy's relationship with Mychal for once, or the disappearance of Pickett Senior.

The characters were fantastic. First and foremost there is Aza, a teenage girl battling with anxiety. While she did not say much, I enjoyed her narratorial point of view. She was a fleshed out character with lots of depth, which is such an improvement to John's previous main characters that were part boring and part even more boring. Now, I don't struggle with an anxiety disorder. I can't possibly judge this novel from that perspective because I never experienced anything similar to what Aza struggles with on a daily basis. But this book managed to make me feel what a person with an anxiety disorder might possibly have to go through - so much that I could only skim the parts where the main character's anxiety surfaces and takes over all her thoughts and actions.
With Daisy, Aza's best friend, it was love at first sight. This girl is precious. I loved everything about her.
I never warmed up Davis, Aza's love interest, if that is what you want to call him. I don't think that I fully got him and I'm not entirely sure why Aza was drawn to him. On one hand, their relationship lacked romance, on the other hand, I'm glad that this was not one big love story. It would not have fit into the story.

Overall I simply liked this novel. Money was one of the story's central themes, and while I'm both uncomfortable with and in awe of this unfathomable wealth depicted in it, I also deeply connected with Daisy, when she talked about what being poor can be like. Of course, wealth and poverty are extremely subjective topics and people hate to talk about money, but I think John Green managed to find a good balance.

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