Meh. While John Green's thoughts and philosophies are stellar, the plot seems to spiral into an abyss of losing my attention. Sorry John, not my favorite of yours.
Summary:
Aza Holmes is a spiral of thoughts as she would describe herself. She can't choose her thoughts or fears, which happen on a regular and uncontrollable basis, but she chooses her actions (sometimes). Aza's best friend, Daisy, hatches a scheme to gain $100,000 of reward money by tracking down the missing billionaire on the lam from the police - a scheme which will reunite Aza with camp friend and the billionaire's son, Davis. But this is less about the money and the mystery and more into the budding romance of two far-from-normal teens looking for meaning in their vast and possibly fictitious universe.
Verdict: 4/10
I thought this book would be a bit like Paper Towns, where it follows a group of teenagers on a quest for meaning and to find a missing person. It was not. It was much more of a character study of Aza and her being trapped in her own mind, full of repetitive thought cycles, and of her trying to escape and become normal. And I did effectively feel trapped in this gyre of a novel (both for better and worse).
While that's all interesting and well-written as far as mental health descriptions go, I didn't find it as clever or groundbreaking as other novels I've seen on the subject.
I just didn't latch on to the characters and found them to be fairly standard. You've got the outgoing best friend, the tortured boyfriend, the helicopter mom. I think Green picked normal characters to really show how abnormal Aza feels and how each of the characters tries to understand her in a different way. Again, an intriguing idea but not the most thrilling execution.
As always, Green wins you over with his dialogue and philosophies. He just has a way of making his characters talk about things beyond regular thought, but that makes it more real. The random conversations that are not plot related exactly, but speak the most to what each person is going through and how they perceive it. And those perceptions are through metaphors.
Metaphors and motifs are Green's superpower. Whether it's having characters stargaze to show the reader how they want to live in a past world that only can be seen light years away. Or maybe it's listening to Aza describe how a parasite in a fish's eye actually controls their destiny and actions to show you how she really feels.
These motifs are researched and written to fully capture the theme that the author is trying to get across. They communicate great emotion and depth... and you get to learn about light years and parasitic bacteria all at the same time. It's like the Seinfeld of books! They talk about nothing and don't do much, but you feel like you've been on a journey with them.
But sadly, I was happy when this journey came to an end. It was a little too far out for me. I appreciate what the author was trying to get across, and I think he did so successfully, but it's not what I gravitate towards. In the end, the ending was not necessarily an ending as much as an explanation. I love and hate when authors do this because, according to Green:
"The problem with happy endings... is that they're either not really happy or they're not really endings. In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die."
A great quote. Yet one that the optimist and clear-cut literalist in me is frustrated by. I like finality. And I know it's deeper to leave it open, I understand that... but it doesn't mean I have to enjoy the confusing nature of an artist. Maybe some can, just not this reader in this novel.
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