Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

 I finally awoke after almost a week and realized "Oh Shoot I have a blog to get to." So here's me trying to get back on the train. * Puts on headphones and cues music*

So there was a time when anybody who asked me who my favorite author was my answer would be, "Duh, obviously John Green." Has anything changed now? Yes. yes, it has. The first novel I ever read was The Fault in our Stars so... you get the idea. Since I read that book John Green had become some revolutionary individual for me. It was then that I decided that I would read everything and anything that he ever published. Have I fulfilled that oath? Somewhat. I have read all his books excluding An Abundance of Katherines and Let it, Snow. Not that I haven't tried reading An Abundance of Katherines, believe me, I have tried. But I just can't seem to care about the main character whose name I have quite conveniently forgotten.

So as a part of the heist, I read Turtles All The Way Down by John Green. I mean come on? A book that has turtles in its title can never go wrong. And it didn't, but there are some things that I'd like to chat about.

Turtles All The Way Down is a book about Aza Holmes our friendly neighborhood sixteen-year-old who is bored (which I can relate to more often than not) of her normal everyday life being affected by her OCD which if you don't know stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In this disorder, a person's mind forces the person to repeatedly perform certain tasks usually involving repeatedly cleansing oneself as the mind keeps on convincing the person that he or she is under the attack of germs. A lot of people have acclaimed this book for its accurate representation of the mental disorder and have praised John Green's writing style. I had no issues whatsoever with the representation of the disorder or John Green's writing style because I do really like his writing style. My issue is with the plot or should I say the sub-plot of this book. The description of this book states that this book is about Aza and her friend Daisy solving the mystery of the missing fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett who happens to be the father of Aza's childhood friend Davis Pickett. And in the mix of all this Aza has OCD. Now what actually happens in the book is that the story is majorly about Aza's OCD and the way she deals with it. Now I don't have any issues with that but what I did not enjoy was the fact that Davis' story is belittled over Aza's story. According to me, Davis' story deserved an entirely separate book because I believe that his story too was important to just be a sub-plot to get the story moving. I was totally against the whole idea of having him and his story in the sidelines as the issue that he faces in his life is not something to be brushed off.

My other issue with this book was Daisy Ramirez. Now it is a known fact that John Green writes about teens and he usually writes these quirky side kick besties who are really fun to read about. But when it came to Daisy she really came off as an overdone character trope and I was annoyed out of my brains whenever she opened her mouth. She always behaved as though she was doing a favor on Aza by hanging out with her and being friends with her. She always taunts her and let's just say her conversation with Aza was not my piece of cake. Towards the ending of the novel, Aza has a breakdown and goes all kamikaze on Daisy (at page no:217) and that was where I was like "Yes girl shut her the hell up." But then after a very important event (spoilers-so I can't tell) John Green gives a shitty reasoning for her behavior and somehow Aza is the one to blame whereas according to me it was Daisy who was being a jerk the whole while. So, the moral of the story- don't be friends with people who keep making you feel inferior.

Other than that I enjoyed this book and yes it is a quick read with a whopping 286 pages so yeah definitely do pick it up when you want to feel good about your reading skills and yourself.

With that, I leave you to your devices.

Introvert Out.