Turtles All The Way Down. John Green. 2017. 286 pages.
The story is about a sixteen-year-old girl, Aza Holmes, who has been suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety. It starts with a fugitive billionaire, Russell Pickett, who is the father of Aza's old friends, Davis Pickett, went missing. Due to the reward of $100,000 for information leading to Pickett's arrest, her friend, Daisy, takes Aza on the search for the missing billionaire.
In the beginning, it seems like the story would go around the mystery of the missing billionaire. However, it actually focuses on Aza and her relationship with others, whereas the mystery part is taken so lightly.
I felt a little bit disappointed when finding out that the main plot wasn't about the search for Russell Pickett, but I will admit that each character of this story was well-written, especially Aza Holmes. I liked the way John Green showed Aza's mental illness; it made me easily understand her. Other interesting characters were Davis Pickett and his younger bother as the missing of their father directly affected their feeling.
Speaking of the relationship in this story, the romantic relationship between Aza and Davis was nice, and I even loved the friendship between Aza and her best friend, Daisy. Their friendship is complicated as Daisy isn't fully understand Aza's suffering, while Aza doesn't quite understand Daisy's tough times without much money either. In spite of this, both of them still love and support each other.
My favorite quotes from Turtles All The Way Down:
“Life is a series of choices between wonders.”
“The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.”
“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”
“What I love about science is that as you learn, you don't really get answers. You just get better questions.”
“It's turtles all the way fucking down, Holmesy. You're trying to find the turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that's not how it works.”
