Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

"The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely..."

It's hard to believe that The Fault in Our Stars came out five years ago! I didn't even realize how much I missed John Green until I started Turtles All the Way Down. Maybe I never mentioned this before, but I love John Green. All of his books are fantastic, as you can see from my reviews of: The Fault in Our Stars, An Abundance of Katherines, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and Paper Towns (I have also read Looking for Alaska-actually, that was my first John Green, but I haven't written a review.) I think I say this with every book, but Turtles All the Way Down is the best one yet.

The main story focuses on Aza Holmes. Her best friend Daisy decides that they should team up to find missing local billionaire Russell Pickett after he flees his home to avoid embezzlement charges. There is a $100,000 reward for any information leading to his capture. Daisy wants them to get that reward, and the first step in the plan is for Aza to reconnect with her old friend, Pickett's son, Davis.

Aza and Davis reconnect so well that they begin dating. The entire time, Aza keeps looking for his father, even after Davis gives them money to stop investigating. She made a promise to his preteen brother that she would find their father, and she intends to keep that promise.

The less dominant, but always present, part of the story is Aza's mental illness. She suffers from anxiety and OCD. Her disease causes her to obsess over getting Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, a type of bacterial infection. These intrusive thoughts lead her to constantly opening a callus on her finger, forcing the blood out, changing the Band-Aid, then repeating the whole thing over again.

Rather than romanticizing her mental illness, Green shows how Aza's disease hinders her detective work. He also touches a bit on the subject of drug treatment. Aza is often called out for not taking her prescribed medications. She claims that they make her less like herself. At his lecture, Green stated that he fully believes in medication to treat mental illness, that they can and do help sick people live their lives. In fact, Aza skipping her meds is part of what leads her into a downward spiral. 

What I also liked about Turtles All the Way Down is how the story focuses on Aza. I keep thinking how if it was told from Davis' perspective, it might have been a lot like Green's previous male-narrated stories. She might have been cast as the manic pixie dream girl (Though to be fair, I'm rethinking that term). It's a book that shows one girl's struggles with mental illness. Personally, I have struggled with anxiety and depression, and could definitely relate with Aza. I definitely understand the desire to have a normal brain instead of a malfunctioning one. It's a meaningful story told with Green's signature style and wit, and I loved it.

Bonus:
Here's a picture of my own personal copy of Turtles All the Way Down with all of my favorite parts/quotes marked:

Also, I had the opportunity to attend John Green's promotional tour in October. You can read about it here.

A Night with John and Hank Green Tour 2017

To help promote the release of Turtles All the Way Down, John Green did a tour with his brother Hank. I had to attend, even though the closest venues were over three hours away. I live in Toledo, Ohio, and I bought a ticket to the event in Cincinnati. It was a long drive, especially all by myself, but the show was amazing and I'm glad I got to see it. Here's some pictures I took and highlights of the show:

I was very worried about finding parking. I'm actually constantly stressed about parking every time I go anyplace new. There was a spot open right by the tour bus and it wasn't blocked by an orange cone. I was worried that it was a trap of some kind, and sat in my car for a couple minutes because I thought I would need to move, but it turned out to just be lucky timing, I think.

We started with John Green reading from Turtles All the Way Down. He read the end of chapter five, from pages 45 to 47. It's a good choice for a reading. Then he talked a bit about the book, Aza, and mental illness.

Dr. Lawrence Turtleman gave a scientific lecture. It was pretty silly.

After that, John and Hank sat down and answered audience questions. My picture of this is terrible. This was the part where one audience member had a special question for his girlfriend, who he met at the John Green event for The Fault in Our Stars. I'm so clueless sometimes and was actually wondering what he was going to ask her before my brain turned on and was like, "Ooooh." Anyways, they got engaged and it was fairly adorable.

That's from John Green's Twitter page.

After that, Hank Green played some songs for us. There was a funny one about how the universe sucks. We did a bonding exercise where we sang "Sweet Caroline" but we had to keep completely silent during the "Ba ba ba" parts. The show ended with a singalong that John said is his anthem of 2017, The Mountain Goats' "This Year." It's a lovely song, and very inspiring actually.

"I am going to make it through this year if it kills me"

Here's the swag bag that came with the ticket price.

Contents of the tote: autographed copy of Turtles All the Way Down (My second autographed copy), program, and tour poster. The tickets weren't terribly priced, considering you also got the book and considering how popular the Greens are.

I decided to buy the special limited print poster. It's really cool, though I bent it in half trying to store it in my tote.

So, I'm definitely glad I decided to attend the event. At first I was going to rent a hotel room to stay in after the program, but I decided to just drive home. It was kind of a mistake. I kept drinking bottles of water and singing Fall Out Boy lyrics in my head to keep going. "If I can live through this, I can do anything..." Shut up, it inspires me. My biggest regret is that I wanted to make my famous sugar cookies for John Green, but decided that I probably wouldn't be able to get them to him. There was a table to give them gifts, though...maybe next time?