Turtles All the Way Down (by John Green)

The Fault in Our Stars isn't perfect, but I love it anyway. It sits on my app and is a frequent re-read.  I am also a fan of John Green in general and I was happy to hear he was writing a book about anxiety issues. So my expectations were super high.

I'm still processing how I felt about this and may need to re-read it. For some reason, it was really difficult for me to read the main character as female. Possibly the Sherlock Holmes association (her irritating best friend, Daisy, calls her "Holmsey" approximately once per sentence) or possibly projection because I know it is based on Green? My own internalized sexism? I don't know. I didn't have this issue at all with Hazel, so not sure what's going on there.

The portrayal of anxiety is clearly, viscerally authentic. Aza's inner monologue and narrative voice work really well. On the other hand, the plotline that it's built around -- the storyline with the billionaire neighbor and the 100K reward and everything being left to a lizard -- seems very at odds with the realism of the novel, and I'm not sure it quite works. Half of it is very much grounded in reality; the other half is very much not.

So, not bad, but not my favorite John Green novel. As I said, I'd like to re-read it, but not sure I can handle a second helping of Daisy.  (She's annoying, y'all. She's annoying.)