Aza has a problem that even therapy is not able to solve.

Davis has a lot of money and a missing father.

And no, this is not their love story.

Turtles All The Way Down is more about friendship than love. The focus is on Aza, her obsession towards infection and the effect of this obsession on her friendship with her best friend Daisy and her new-found love with Davis. Aza is so caught up in her spiral that she zones out of conversations. This is Aza’s narrative and she is not in the best of mental health. Her problem is not something she can snap out of, she lives and struggles with it every moment of her life.

John Green has tackled the matter of mental illness in a teenager brilliantly. Rarely do we see authors give such a complication to their main character and she shines. She is not the shining star of her school and she knows she is ill, she is going through counselling for this and yet, she can’t control her urges. But, she manages it all and even digs into the disappearance of Davis’s father.

Another high point of the story is Aza and Daisy’s friendship. They have been together almost all their lives and even though Daisy knows Aza has some issues, it is much later in the story that she understands everything that Aza goes through.

I liked this book because it shows how your own thoughts can strangle you as if you are stuck in a spiral. And John Green puts it aptly when he says “The thing about spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely”.

After The Fault in Our Stars, I was quite eager to read this book and I am not disappointed. Turtles All the Way Down does not have the same impact as the earlier book but it is enjoyable till the end. John Green’s characters are good and he has given depth to them and he keeps away from stereotypical ending. The book also has a good number of quotes and metaphors to impress everyone.

My rating: 3.5/5