Pages: 368 Pages
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Mental Illness
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion, June 2015
Link: Amazon
Overall Rating 5/5 stars
Synopsis: Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can’t turn off.
Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn’t help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush. Yet Sam knows she’d be truly crazy to leave the protection of the most popular girls in school. So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend with a refreshing sense of humor and no style a secret, right up there with Sam’s weekly visits to her psychiatrist.
Caroline introduces Sam to Poet’s Corner, a hidden room and a tight-knit group of misfits who have been ignored by the school at large. Sam is drawn to them immediately, especially a guitar-playing guy with a talent for verse, and starts to discover a whole new side of herself. Slowly, she begins to feel more “normal” than she ever has as part of the popular crowd . . . until she finds a new reason to question her sanity and all she holds dear.
Review
I didn’t know Purely-Obsessional OCD existed until I read this book. I have a better understanding of it now but I’ll never really know what it’s like to have a hundred negative thoughts pass through me at the same time. Stone did a notable job writing about this topic.
By the way, the brain delivers seven thousand thoughts in a single day.
I like that this book is set in high school. I’m in high school. These type of books are way more interesting to read because of the drama and that I can relate to some of them. I hope there is a Poet’s Corner at my school.
Samantha and I both like the same number, three. She gets lane three at her swim meets, parks her car when it’s three on the odometer, scratches her neck, and knocks on the door three times. Samantha is also an athlete. I recently volunteered at a swim meet at my school and it got me excited for PE. I’ll be swimming as my next PE unit. I would like to swim every day, like Samantha, but I don’t have a ride.
I was surprised when I found out that Samantha found out that Caroline wasn’t real. Caroline is amazing. She’s an incredible friend to Sam. I agree with her when she said technology is a trap.
Overall, I rate this book 5/5 stars because it was interesting throughout the whole book. If you’ve read it, tell me what you thought of it!
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