This is definitely the best book John Green has ever written, and I’m kicking myself for putting off reading it.

The way certain storylines are wrapped up could, plot-wise, be called “anticlimactic,” and are definitely unexpected — especially of the distinct storytelling style we all know as John Green — but they are perfect. They are exactly the ending Aza Holmes and I the reader need.

There will be spoilers.

Why I love this book

I am different from Aza Holmes in many ways, besides being a 23-year-old college grad vs. a teenage high school student. I’m very talkative, I don’t have OCD, and I obsess over different things than Aza does. But I do have anxiety, and I do obsess.

Her run-on sentences, thought spirals, intrusive thoughts, repetitive thoughts and phrases — it’s all just like my own head. I, too, live my life in metaphors, and know when something is wrong in my brain while still somehow not being able to do anything about it.

Her psychiatrist, Dr. Sing, is wonderful. Some of the things Dr. Sing said in their sessions made me feel like I was sitting in therapy myself. Real take-home truths right there.

Anyone here who read my old high school/college blog may remember the Book I Hate Most in Life, a.k.a. All the Bright Places. That book, about depression and bipolar, was spot-on amazing until the trainwreck plot twist (metaphorically, not a literal train wreck), which led into a dumpster fire ending. (For those not familiar: it turned one main character’s mental illness into some inspiring development arc for the other character and completely destroyed any possibility of hope or a better life for the depressed guy. It was awful.)

Turtles All the Way Down is like the holy inverse of that book, for anxiety: absolutely amazing, spot-on, with exactly the ending people with mental illness deserve in our representation. It’s just so real. And I also think it’s the most genuine, honest, real story John Green has written to date.

Actual notes on the writing and story

The writing in this book is much more subtle than anything I’ve seen in most YA, or managed to make work in my own fiction so far. The readers aren’t explicitly told anything. We’re expected to figure things out, put pieces together, think along with the main character without the conclusion being spelled out; we’re given just enough detail and information to do so easily and naturally.

For example, when Aza is reading the popular fanfiction her best friend posts online, she never explicitly says/thinks “this character is based on me.” We figure this fact out as she’s reading the fanfiction, just like she does, and she skips spelling it out to go straight into her complicated emotions.

Similarly — in a more powerful moment — the new medicine Aza is on near the end of the book is working better. She’s in the hallway surrounded by people, but not spiraling. She eats lunch outside in a picnic, despite panicking at even the suggestion of eating outside earlier in the book. No one says “this medicine appears to be working.” It just happens, and we as the readers can observe it and figure that out ourselves.

Other readers probably have more to say about this book, but I’m skipping to the ending now, because it’s my favorite and, honestly, the best part of this book.

The book deviates from my expectations of John Green, and somehow his personality and voice seem to shine through stronger as a result. This is no “teenager and quirky best friend have dartboard-plotted Epic YA Adventure.” Aza doesn’t get the guy. The answer to the billionaire fugitive mystery is indirectly, accidentally solved and all too realistic for “quirky adventure book.”

The happily-ever-after, if you can call it that, is in a new approach to her OCD treatment plan and finding the medicine that makes things sort-of-better-but-not. Because that’s how mental illness and medicine work in the real world. There is no getting well soon, no “all better now,” no tidy story arc of “I was sick and then I wasn’t.” That’s the point of the entire book — there is no healed mental illness, only managed. Our (people with mental illness) lives are different than “normal,” different from what we want and wish them to be, because of that reality. But they can still be valid and good.

Aza’s happy ending wasn’t in grand adventures or philosophical quotes or big life moments, or a romantic relationship or even really her friendship with Daisy. Her happy ending isn’t magical relief and healing, either, because you just can’t get that for anxiety; it doesn’t exist. Her happy ending is finding treatment that works to make her life liveable. She always still has spirals and intrusive thoughts, but she can set them aside for a while, think about other things instead. Her brain can be settled, quiet, long enough to have a good life. She can live in the moment. And all of this is not because of something she did, diet or meditation or journaling or exercise, or some magic new perspective on life, but simply taking medication. It’s the right medication for her, and she’s taking it as prescribed, and it works — kind of. That’s the best any of us can hope for right now.

The epilogue revealing adult Aza to be the writer of the story, filling in the details, was unexpected and especially fascinating. In hindsight, I might’ve figured it out sooner if I weren’t reading through a specific lens of what I expected from John Green (my bad). She tells the story of illness, of getting better and worse, the ebb and flow of living with chronic illness. She fell in love, had children, was hospitalized, returned to the world, got sick again. But she had a family and a good life and her best friend. (I also loved the play with first and second person pronouns in the book considering this reveal — speaking to/of herself as both the one and only Aza, and the younger and older versions of herself, at different times.)

John Green’s interview with Time magazine

I don’t actually know a lot about John Green as a person. I love that he, too, hails from Indiana, and what I’ve seen of his YouTube videos are really fun. His wife seems super cool.

After reading Turtles, I hit up Google to find out how exactly the man so perfectly nailed the inside of an anxiety-haver’s brain, which is when I learned John Green has OCD himself. In the process, I discovered an interview he did about Turtles with Time magazine. I wanted to share a few quotes… but also it was super hard to choose which ones and you should definitely read the whole thing yourself: John Green’s interview with Time magazine.

Interviewer: “You emphasize the idea that there’s no magical cure for mental illness throughout the book. Why was it important to you to convey that message?”

John Green: “We really like stories that involve conquering obstacles and involve victory over adversity. And I love those stories too. It’s just that hasn’t been my story with mental illness and I didn’t really want it to be Aza’s. For me, it’s not something I expect to defeat in my life. It’s not like a battle I expect to win. It’s something I expect to live with and still have a fulfilling life.”

“There’s so many detective stories about obsessive people who are brilliant detectives because of their obsessiveness, and my experience with obsessiveness has been more or less the complete opposite. I wanted to write a detective story where the plot keeps getting interrupted by this person’s inability to live in the world in the way that she wants to.” – John Green making the necessary point that romanticizing mental illnesses need to be over; they are major roadblocks to life and pains in the ass. No matter how cool or even “flawed” and “human” Sherlock is on tv, his life is very, very fictional.

“One of the main things I wanted to do in the book was to get at how isolating it can be to live with mental illness, and also how difficult it can be for the people who are around you because you’re so isolated.”

Conclusion

I recommend this book to every reader ever, and I can’t wait to see the inevitable movie.