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“Turtles All The Way Down” – John Green

TATWD

I  will preface this blog entry by saying that I might be a little bias when it comes to John Green novels. I adore John Green. But with every book he releases, it makes me nervous because I hold them up to the same standards as I do with Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns. It’s like your favourite band releasing an absolute banger of an album and then you have to wait for 3 years for the next album and then the day it’s released you’re wondering if they sound the same (Jimmy Eat World,  I’m talking about you guys!)

When this book was released I was in China traveling for the World Dragonboat Championships. We’d just traveled to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors and I remember sitting in the bus at 8pm that night on the way back to airport with 1% phone battery reading this book because I was so engrossed with the story.

So whats it about then, I hear you ask? Read on, dear reader …

The story is centred around 16  year old Aza Holmes and her best friend Daisy. Aza suffers from mental health issues such as anxiety and OCD. When anxious, she  digs her thumb nail into her thumb pad and cuts it to relieve the tension. Equipped with band-aids and solid friends, she enters into a bit of a mystery and becomes a young detective.

Aza used to be friends with a boy called Davis. When Davis’s father suddenly and suspiciously disappears in the wake of fraud accusations, a cash reward is offered which gets Daisy super excited. They begin investigating the disappearance and uncover a lot of truths along the way. When money is involved, it tests friendships between Daisy and Aza, and Aza and Davis, and we begin to find out that the money can never buy peace of mind and friendships.

It’s not much of a synopsis, I know. But that’s all you’re getting. What I do want to say is that it’s a really great story about friendships with someone who suffers poor mental health.  As someone who has suffered with poor mental health for the majority of my life, Aza’s situations rang a bell with me. Her best friend, Daisy, learns to love her despite of her mental health conditions, but it means dealing with it in her own way – which just so happens to be Star Wars fan fiction.

While seemingly polar opposites personality wise, what I love is that Aza and Daisy’s friendship stands the  test of time. I could talk about the relationship between Aza and Davis for sure, but that’s not what I took away from this novel.

I mentioned before that I was reading this on a bus with 1% phone battery left. My phone died about 30 pages before the end … When I got back to the hotel in Bejing it was about 1am. I got a glass of wine, and sat at the writing table in the hotel with my phone plugged in reading the last chapter of the book. And I cried. I don’t cry often reading books, but John Green gets me every time. I sat there, reading the last chapter with tears streaming down my face because even though this was a story about a millionaire who goes missing, it’s also about the struggles that people like me face every day when you’re living with anxiety and OCD.

It’s about the friendships you form with people who don’t leave your side no matter what you go through (Nat, Marie, I’m talking about you!). It’s about starting new relationships and having them not work out. And that’s perfectly OK. It’s about sitting with family secrets and viewing people in different lights. It’s about actually LIVING.

I urge you to read this book. It might make you uncomfortable, but stick with it. It’s a bit different to the usual John Green style of writing, but what I love is that it makes this book so unique. It deals with real life issues and since I finished reading this in 2018, I’ve re-read it twice. I keep it on my phone so I can pick up a chapter on my lunch break or on the tram into work.

And now I’m ready to re-read Looking For Alaska, in light of it being released on Hulu and Stan tonight.

Overall rating: 4/5 stars