Turtles All The Way Down

By John Green

Completed on March 14, 2018

John Green is not a great author, but he is a solid 7, and definitely a must-read in the YA genre. I loved Looking for Alaska, and found The Fault in Our Stars sweet enough, so I was very excited about this book.

I ended it with mixed feelings. On one hand, Aza is definitely a polarizing narrator. Some would find her endearing, and some may be annoyed with her. I find this conundrum amusing, since I hate black and white characters. That said, Daisy starts off funny, but soon starts getting on your nerves. Davis is enigmatic, and it would have been great if there were some pay off with all the mystery built around him. Aza’s mother is probably the only real person in the book though.

That’s because while the characters are good, they are very clearly fake, and you have the dialogues to thank for that. No teenager (and no adult either) talks in the fabricated philosophical fashion as the characters in this book. Sometimes this is a gift, for in what YA fiction would you expect to read about the Turtles all the way down theory. But in other places, the philosophy seems forced, such as the “uniforms theory” early in the book.

It’s a quick read, so you might as well finish it over a rainy weekend.