Phoebe Gates, the 15-year-old daughter of Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, has apparently inherited her father’s love of reading. In a new post on the Gates Notes blog, the two share a review of “Turtles All the Way Down,” by author John Green.
Gates regularly offers up his opinion on books he’s reading and recommends at the moment, and he provides seasonal lists, whether it’s for summer beach reading or books that would make great year-end gifts.
In Tuesday’s post, Gates opens by saying that Phoebe has turned the whole family into fans of Green’s young-adult novels. The best-selling author’s previous titles have included “Looking for Alaska,” “An Abundance of Katherines,” “Paper Towns” and “The Fault in Our Stars.”
“I’ve read a couple of John’s books and enjoyed them all, and his latest is no exception,” Gates wrote.
Gates and his wife Melinda did an event with Green in New York a couple years ago, and Phoebe got the chance to meet the author, who shared with her at the time the plot for what would become “Turtles.”
That plot involves a missing billionaire named Russell Pickett and a high school student who is trying to track him down. That character, Aza Holmes, has obsessive compulsive disorder and Phoebe admits in the blog post to struggling with that condition herself.
The teen was also able to relate to the character Davis, the son of Pickett, whom Aza develops feelings for.
“Never has a book been able to capture so well what it is like to live in the shadow of someone else’s legacy,” Phoebe wrote. “This story shows how Davis struggled to find his own identity outside of his father’s fame and wealth. Although we have very different relationships with our dads, I recognized his struggle, which also plays into my own life as I find my way in this world.”
