Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I just finished reading it. And I am sitting here crying. I hated it. And I absolutely loved it. Now that you are utterly confused, read on if any one you love struggles with mental illness. I hated this book for a lot of reasons. I hated it because the characters in it bug the crap out of me. Worse than some of the more annoying people in my real life. I hated it because there are things stylistically I wanted from this author, because he is one of my favorite authors, and those things, stylistically, were not really there. I hate it because my greatest fear in life is of spiraling into uncontrollable mental illness, and the book puts you inside the head of someone who has a spiraling mental illness, and it does so with just an eerie amount of accuracy, and I don't want to be inside that spiral. It is too scary inside that spiral. And I hate this book most of all because some of the people I love most in life, people who truly own parts of my soul, live inside that spiral far too often, and it hurts deep down to be reminded of that. I don't like to read books that make me hurt. I usually avoid them at all costs. If I start one, and discover it is that kind of book, I don't often finish it. But this book is by John Green, with whom I have a relationship that is hard to explain. Because so much of the history minutiae I have memorized is from Crash Course videos, he is the voice inside my head when I think of history. He is much smarter than me, which I admire, and a phenomenal writer, which I envy. So I had to finish the book. I absolutely love this book because revealing your inner demons in such vivid reality is incredibly brave, and that makes him a hero in my eyes. John Green suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (which is not ever named in the book, but it is painted in horrifically detailed words throughout). People don't talk about mental illness enough, but here he is revealing his inmost self. And yes, it is him. He has been doing interviews about it and whatnot. The doctor the protagonist sees in the book is even similarly named to his own doctor, whom he thanks in the acknowledgements. John Green has a credibility with teenagers that is pretty hard to establish, and as a result, millions of teenagers are going to read this book. That might not seem a small thing, but it might mean that perhaps the world will understand mental illness just a little bit better. For that, John Green is my hero. Read at your own risk. And I am still crying.