Hardcover, 355 pagesRelease Date: June 16, 2015Published by: Disney-HyperionStand-aloneSource: Own (Bought)For fans of: Chick-lit, Coming of Age, Contemporary Romance, Health Issues, Literary Hot Guys, Own, Pre-Ordered, Realistic Fiction, YA
If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling.
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.
*MY THOUGHTS*
Hearing about Stone's new book automatically got me excited. But then finding out what it was about, I got kind of nervous. You see, I myself have been diagnosed with OCD and just the same as Sam's, it's "Purely O" alongside with Separation Anxiety. I wasn't sure how I would react to reading about someone like me, but as I read it, I knew I had nothing to be nervous about.
"I thought people with OCD were supposed to be neat"
pg. 74
Samantha is a popular girl with a huge secret. She has OCD that causes her thoughts to get out of control and obsess over certain things over and over. But then she meets her friend Caroline who introduces her to a group of people who make up Poet's Corner. These people bring out a completely different person in Sam. Someone who Sam views as "normal."
"Are you sure? Because you can tell me if I am. I have a tendency to over think things., especially when it comes to my friends, and I don't know... I take things too personally, I mean, it isn't always them. Sometimes it's me. I just don't know when it's them and when it's me, you know?"
pg 77
Since I have plans to make this book into a Beyond the Book post, I won't much go into Sam's OCD, but I will say that everything Stone wrote was extremely accurate. The thought spirals, making everything seem to be a bad thing, trying to know everything you can about a specific subject. Stone put in her author's note that she wanted to make it as real as possible so she talked to doctors and a family friend that she knew went through this. I really wish this had been something I could have read before I was diagnosed. It could certainly have helped me later on.
"Mistakes are how we learned to walk and run and that hot things burn when you touch them. You've made mistakes all your life and you're going to keep making them, [..] The trick is to recognize your mistakes and move on."
pg. 101
I also loved the writing style in this book. This wasn't the first book I read by Stone, so I knew it would be easy to read. Well besides the part that made it a little too hard to handle. I just couldn't imagine seeing someone as a teen going through something like that. I was also happy to see that there was still some story in it. I was expecting mostly doctor speak and the illness to be the main focus of the story, but that was the exact opposite. So much so, I was sucked into the story. So much so I wanted to be a part of Poet's Corner. I even started looking at fast food wrappers different.
"I like to know where I stand with people, and I figure I owe them the same courtesy. I mean, I'm never rude or hurtful about it, but I don't see any reason to be fake. That's a lot of work."
pg. 124
As far as the romance, it was amazing. He seemed to be her Knight in Shining Armor and I loved that. It's not normally what I like in a teen story, but in this story, I feel that this is exactly what Sam needed. She needed someone to help her get through all the things going on inside her brain. And he was super hot. He played the guitar, he sung, and he wrote poetry?! Yes please. He's going on my list of Top Book Boyfriends. He loved her and it was obvious that she finally found what it was that could keep her grounded.
"...embrace who you are and surround yourself with people who do the same."
pg. 253
This may sound cliché, but I mean it: I wish I had had something like this to help me feel better when I was younger. It featured everything that I had been through and everything that I've grown to love about Stone and her books: music, swoony book boys, and the readability of them. I already can't wait for her next book.
Overall, I give this
