Turtles all the Way Down by John Green

My rating: 3.5/5 stars

John Green is seen by us readers as the parent of YA, having a rich background in such type of books and winning our hearts with “The Fault in Our Stars”, “Looking for Alaska” or “Paper Towns”. After 5 years of absence, he is back with “Turtles all the Way Down” which from my POV doesn’t present us a major change in his writing style, but considering how much the reading scene missed him, it’s just glad to have him back with a new story.

Aza is our leading lady, a 16 year old girl, who suffers from OCD. When the father of her best friend disappears, she goes in search for him, beginning an adventure that will make us learn so much about her. The plot is not extremely complex, but as we are accustomed to, John is not very elaborate in making complicated plots, he is focused on typologies and personalities. He was very well documented about OCD and managed to describe Aza perfectly, getting inside her mind and picturing how a person with this kind of problem will act and think. Even if teenagers are leading this book, the whole story is extremely mature and with a strong message.

What I love about John Green is the simple way of exposing the plot, focusing on characters, but in the same time I am very curious to read him in more complicated lines, because I know that he has the means to do it. The way he crafts his characters is amazing, giving them not only a powerful inner voice, but also great personality and mature knowledge. I appreciate this respect he has for teens, not finding them superficial or something, just adding value to this generation and exposing their smart side.

I tried to focus more on Aza, on her situation and see how she will manage to fulfill her mission even with this voices in her hear. John explained perfectly OCD through Aza and you get the full picture of it, even trying to think as her. It was a very unique imagination exercise. The mystery element was clearly topped by OCD and you will see that after reading this book, you will be more opened about delicate subjects, such as this one.

“Turtles all the Way Down” is John Green 100%, with a simple story but a great life lesson behind it. Not wanting to repeat myself, but I am very curios to see him taking up a change in style and delivering something new, something that will break this style we all are used to…