Turtles All The Way Down: A Spoiler-Free Review and Some Thoughts

I've been a fan of John Green's work ever since I was in my early teens. Outside of my circle of friends, not many people knew of his work. It was disheartening at the time, because his work always struck a chord with me and I wanted everyone to hear that chord. I wanted people to understand what I was talking about.

And then The Fault in Our Stars came out, and he rose to worldwide fame overnight. I became a crotchety old hipster. I was mad that people had jumped on the bandwagon that I had tried to get them on from the get go. I felt like people were just focusing on this one success and not on the ones he had had before. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and saw the movie when it was released (and bawled my eyes out). Then I slowly stopped reading for fun, life got in the way, and I had broken away from the Nerdfighter community (more on how I got back to it here).

And then for my birthday, my boyfriend had pre-ordered John's newest book Turtles All The Way Down. I was very excited when he announced the book . While I certainly had not expected to him release a new book anytime soon, he had expressed in other vlogbrothers videos that he had been struggling with writing a new book and wasn't sure if he'd write one again. As a writer, I feel the same way. I constantly wonder if my content will be good enough and am afraid of judgement. I am afraid of being wrong and use the excuse of perfectionism to get in the way of actually producing content.

But then some things happened in my life that started me back on the path of writing. First and foremost, I encountered some rough patches and writing has always been a form of release for me. I've noticed that when I write I start to exhale and feel lighter at heart. I feel like things make sense and I can communicate more effectively than if I were to say the same things to a person or to a video camera. Secondly, I have been on the search to find things that I'm passionate about and/or focus on things that once made me passionate. I've been trying to cut down on time-wasters and things that don't make me happy in pursuit of the things that do.

Lastly, I watched Hank Green's video on his  secret to productivity and immediately felt relief. No matter how often people have repeatedly told me I don't need to be perfect, I always feel like I have to be. I've always been my own worst enemy. I always find ways to convince myself that my efforts are not enough. And that's what struck me the most about John's newest novel. The protagonist, Aza Holmes, has to battle her mental illness of OCD while trying to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of a local billionaire along with her best friend Daisy and the billionaire's son, Davis all while dealing with other struggles like homework, being a good daughter and friend, etc.

And that's just the short end of it. While I do not have OCD,  I related with Aza's thought spirals that take her down into a place where she does not want to be. It was getting to the point where I'd have to put the book down in between chapters because it was so intense for me. It meant so much to have an author that I look up to capture the struggles of living with a mental illness. It's hard for people who don't have one to understand, and it can be hard for the person with a mental illness to verbalize how they feel.

I can't recommend this book enough. It was the first book that, on a night I couldn't sleep, I finished reading at 1:30am. I felt hopeful at the end of the book and expressed my gratitude to John Green in a tweet. I wish I could have contextualized how I felt in that moment in more than 140 characters. But more than anything else, his novel made me feel validated and reminded me that I'm not alone, no matter how much my mind might try to convince me otherwise.

And the fact that he liked me tweet was extra validating :)