published: 10/10/2017
pages: 286
pages: 286
ISBN: 9780525555360
read: 10/26-30/2017
rating: John Green, please NEVER stop writing! you are a genius!!!!
book: 29 of 29 for 2017. I AM DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i thought, lying there, that i might love him for the rest of my life. we did love each other--maybe we never said it, and maybe love was never something we were in, but it was something i felt. i loved him, and i thought, maybe i will never see him again, and I'll be stuck missing him, and isn't that so terrible.
It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.
Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
MY THOUGHTS!
i don't even know where to start or what to say.
John Green, you are a Genius.
Please take your time with books but please, never stop writing.
as you all know, I'm a fan of his work. i think I've read most of his books (proof here, here, here and here.) but i think this is by far his best book ever.
i can't even begin to write about it without wanting you to read this all bundled up with a box of Kleenex next to you.
it's true what they say; this story will make you cry.
this is something else.
this is John Green at his best.
this is John Green making you fall in love all over again, introducing you to characters you want to love forever and making you cry at the end because damn can that man mess with your heart in the utter best way possible.
i love this story for SO MANY reasons.
i think it has to do with the fact that you think it will go one way, but it doesn't. you think it'll be about a certain couple but it isn't, that it will involve disaster in a bad way and while it does, it doesn't.
i LOVED Aza.
the way he wrote her.
so flawed but still loved by Daisy (and obvs her mother). but also how she evolves in the end. how mental illness is just that, an illness. it doesn't define you forever if you treat it properly because there is always a way.
I LOVED Daisy for being Daisy. for being Aza's friend when she wasn't getting a lot in return, for never faulting her for who she is even if there were a little moments of frustration here and there. for always being there through it all and mostly because she will always be there.
they WILL always be there for each other.
i love the friendship that they have.
i love that this story is about friendship and the love that they have for each other without having to spell it out constantly. you know it's there.
i love the honesty of this friendship.
its not always the best. but it's real.
i have to say that hands down my favorite part of the story (and the part that fucking broke me), is the end with Davis.
i won't say what that is, but even her thought process about Love just fucking blew me away.
it was like the extra closure that i needed to read.
i can't even handle how good it was.
also, that cover!!!!
admittedly, i wasn't a fan of it at first. nothing about it drove me crazy. i did like the color though. and i had no idea why it was titled what it is (I'm pretty sure i could've googled it buuut i didn't) but after reading the story, it makes it that much more important that the cover and the title are what they are.
i wont say more on here because ill spill my guts out in the spoilers but i definitely recommend that you read this book.
take your time and love it.
you won't regret it.
and with that, this is my "final" book of 2017 and let me tell you, it did not let me down.
hands down, my favorite read of the year.
O F M Y L I F E!
ill leave ya with like 1,000 quotes. (i flagged the crap out of this book!)
"...anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see."
- Aza pg 9
"no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again."
-Davis pg 59
"Your now is not your forever."
-Aza pg 93
"Being vulnerable is asking to get used."
-Aza pg 108
"Oh no no no. Far from it. What i love about science is that as you learn, you don't really get answers. You just get better questions."
-Malik pg 177
Part of me wanted to tell him i loved him, but i wasn't sure if i really did. Our hearts were broken in the same places. that's something like love. but maybe not quite the thing itself."
pg 206
To be alive it to be missing.
pg 281
THERE IS HOPE, EVEN WHEN YOUR BRAIN TELLS YOU THERE ISN'T.
-John Green
there are a million and one things that i could say about this book i just don't know how or where to start.
I'm pretty sure my little ass review did not do this book justice but just know that this book is golden. i can't even properly convey to you how amazing this book is.
its John Green at his finest.
its written in his voice so well. besides Nicola Yoon, i have not come across another YA writer that makes me feel like they're writing for just more than the YA fans. it speaks to everyone.
its a love story, its a friendship story. its a family story. its a heartbreak story.
its all of these subjects rolled into one and he just wraps this up so beautifully. I'm seriously mad that i don't have the proper words to describe this to you because it deserves so much more than i can ever speak on.
FUCKING LOVE IS AMAZING NO MATTER WHAT!!!!!!!
thanks for reading!
jump on over for spoilers.
#lesreads on IG
PS: if a movie is ever made, don't you see Miles Teller playing Davis?
news break that Davis' father has gone on the run after some fraud was conducted by his company and he's now a wanted man.
there is no record or footage of him leaving his estate the night that his home was raided.
nobody knows how he might have escaped except, Aza & now Daisy.
Aza went to camp with Davis when they were young. so she knows that he has a camera set up in his backyard.
so they devise a plan to find him so that they can get the reward for turning him or handing over info.
they head over to Davis' estate through a river and get close enough that she can download all the files on her phone.
BINGO!
she finds what they need.
then they get busted by Lyle the property manager and Daisy being the outspoken human that she is, lets him know that Aza does know Davis and the reason they were on his property was because their kayak (canoe?) broke.
he takes them up to Davis where he's hanging out by the pool and they start to hang out.
of course he knows why they were on the property.
and basically, he buys off their silence.
they split the money halfsies and well, that's it.
except that Davis's brother, Noah, wants to know what happened to their father and why he just left without calling.
he lets Aza know that he has some notes that he got from his dad's phone and he just wants her to keep looking.
among the many, Joggers mouth is a clue that no one has any idea what it means.
among the many, Joggers mouth is a clue that no one has any idea what it means.
after Davis buys their promise off, this subject just falls to the side and you get an inside into Aza and how her brain works in regards to her OCD/mental illness.
i mean throughout the book, its always there but now that she's hanging out with Davis more, she kind breaks.
Daisy has been there for her since they first became friends (i don't think he mentions how they met but i don't really remember) but she starts dating their other friend Mychal and typical first boyfriend kind of deal, she starts hanging out with him more (it was never really overboard. i don't think anyway). Daisy also write fan fic about star wars and she's actually very popular, however Aza hasn't really read any of it.
and then she does and she kinda gets mad over it.
on their way to applebee's (they practically live there and i LOVE that bit with the coupons) Aza confronts her and she's already spiraling out of control with her disorder so she's a bit late and they crash.
Daisy seems to be fine with Aza taking most of the hit.
at this point her ocd/disorder/illness is taking the best of her and she's at the point where she's always freaking out but fighting with herself yet always losing when she hits her lowest point and in the hospital while all fucked up because of the accident, where her mother is next to her, she drinks hand sanitizer hoping to clean her insides because she KNOWS she's getting C. Diff (i gotta look it up to give you the name).
she stays in the hospital for 8 days and she finally goes back to school after 14 days.
by then her & Daisy are good to go and eventually she gets back on track with Davis.
then they go to applebee's and she tells him straight out that they could never be a thing because her illness won't allow it and its not fair that she ask him to wait basically.
by the end of the dinner, whatever they were, they no longer are.
Mychal is going to have his artwork (a piece he was working on at the beginning of the story) shown at this art show that takes place in an underground tunnel thing and Daisy begs her to go. eventually she agrees.
you have to go through the forest in the dark and all this to get to it and eventually they do.
then they go for a walk into the forest, where i love that Daisy points out to Aza that she doesn't understand how she freaks out over her finger but not over the fact that she's probably walking all over rat feces infested water. (her mother explained to her when she was little the whole concept of 'pinch yourself so you know its real' so ever since then she's been pinching her middle finger and she's always pinching it, disinfecting it with hand sanitizer and then wrapping it up with a band-aid. she does this all. the. time!!!)
so they walk in and hit then end and then BOOM!!!! joggers mouth. after some conversation...they realize, well Aza does, that they are in "joggers mouth" (apparently the mouth of the river is at the end. hence, its the mouth.)
they also realized walking in there that it smelled REALLY bad in there. more than rat feces could explain.
that's when Aza realizes that they have inadvertently found Mr. Pickett.
they leave and she struggles with whether she should tell Davis.
Mr. Pickett left his entire estate EVERYTHING!!!! to a tuatara (a lizard) and nothing to his boys.
legally, he is alive for seven years by the state regardless of the actual status of the body. if they find him, Davis and Noah lose everything to a lizard.
so she tells him.
and he breaks down.
then she sees on the news that they found the body and her first reaction is to apologize and tell him that it wasn't her nor Daisy (the tip was anonymous) and he lets her know that it was actually him and Noah who reported the body.
months pass and one day, he shows up on her door with a present.
she takes him to her back yard and they sit in silence here and there and stare up at the sky.
she asks him why he told and he tells her that his brother and his sanity is more important and needed, than all the money they had.
he then tells her that he's leaving to Colorado the next day. Noah got accepted into a boarding school so they're out.
she has a realization about love and jumps into her future and it leaves with them saying goodbye.
and that's it, but, no one says goodbye unless they want to see you again.
----
there's still stuff i left out, i gave you the gist of it.
this book is just something else.
please, go read it. <3
then they go for a walk into the forest, where i love that Daisy points out to Aza that she doesn't understand how she freaks out over her finger but not over the fact that she's probably walking all over rat feces infested water. (her mother explained to her when she was little the whole concept of 'pinch yourself so you know its real' so ever since then she's been pinching her middle finger and she's always pinching it, disinfecting it with hand sanitizer and then wrapping it up with a band-aid. she does this all. the. time!!!)
so they walk in and hit then end and then BOOM!!!! joggers mouth. after some conversation...they realize, well Aza does, that they are in "joggers mouth" (apparently the mouth of the river is at the end. hence, its the mouth.)
they also realized walking in there that it smelled REALLY bad in there. more than rat feces could explain.
that's when Aza realizes that they have inadvertently found Mr. Pickett.
they leave and she struggles with whether she should tell Davis.
Mr. Pickett left his entire estate EVERYTHING!!!! to a tuatara (a lizard) and nothing to his boys.
legally, he is alive for seven years by the state regardless of the actual status of the body. if they find him, Davis and Noah lose everything to a lizard.
so she tells him.
and he breaks down.
then she sees on the news that they found the body and her first reaction is to apologize and tell him that it wasn't her nor Daisy (the tip was anonymous) and he lets her know that it was actually him and Noah who reported the body.
months pass and one day, he shows up on her door with a present.
she takes him to her back yard and they sit in silence here and there and stare up at the sky.
she asks him why he told and he tells her that his brother and his sanity is more important and needed, than all the money they had.
he then tells her that he's leaving to Colorado the next day. Noah got accepted into a boarding school so they're out.
she has a realization about love and jumps into her future and it leaves with them saying goodbye.
and that's it, but, no one says goodbye unless they want to see you again.
----
there's still stuff i left out, i gave you the gist of it.
this book is just something else.
please, go read it. <3
Good post. I'm facing some of these issues as well..
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