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| Image (c) Disney-Hyperion |
Publication Date: June 16th, 2015
Format: eARC from Netgalley
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.
I
have fallen in love with Miss Stone's previous works and I got
incredibly excited when I discovered a new book of hers. Because I was
still wrapped up with her debut books, the Time Between Us duology, I
thought it would be somewhat related to that. Yeah, I'm silly, I know.
But, still, another book. Yay!!
This
book is centered around a teenager named Samantha who has to deal with a
mental illness called OCD since she was ten years old. Because of this,
she's been seeing a psychiatrist in order to help manage it in a way
that it doesn't hinder how she lives. None of her friends know about
this, which is a good thing in Sam's eyes - after all, if they found out
about what goes through her head constantly, they might not even want
to be seen with her. Things are a bit stressful.
At
least until Caroline shows up - the one friend who has introduced Sam
to what is considered the 'Poet's Corner'. This is where some of the
students hang out and recite whatever poems they have written. Even
though, at first, they didn't care for Samantha due to her constant
bullying against most of them - but, thanks to the guitar-playing
teenager, they give her a chance. But is it really worth shooting for
something that she loves that she's forced to hide from her other
friends?
I'll
be the first to admit that I don't know much about OCD other than what
may be common knowledge (those who have a need to do rituals in order to
lessen their anxiety). I don't know how it feels like to deal with it
on a daily basis. But, as I live with another form of mental illness, I
had imagine that it would be more prevalent in Sam's life than what was
portrayed in this book. There are some scenes that you can just tell
scream OCD but they happened less than I anticipated.
On the topic of OCD, though- I can't really imagine that none of her friends wouldn't have realized what was going on with her. I don't think something like OCD would be easy to hide - especially at a young age when she was informed of her mental illness. If you're clueless on how to control your mental health, especially since it was recently discovered, it's hard to fall out of those certain routines without time. Even so, I imagine they would leak out in public somehow.
Just
to give a little bit of perspective - I've been with anxiety for a long
time... most likely since I was in elementary school but I wasn't
diagnosed with it until I was in college. I recently went back to my
meds back in mid 2014 when I found myself in a management position.
Before those meds, you could clearly tell just how nervous I was. I
remember getting so nauseated just opening the store - and I wasn't even
anticipating anyone coming by until an hour. My managers knew. Probably
all the customers knew. I felt like crying constantly. One day, my
anxiety overtook me so bad, I threw up. I couldn't even consume water
without it coming back out again.
I
couldn't hide my anxiety. Even with my meds, anxious thoughts still run
through my head, but at least I can manage being employed at a job. Sam
may think she's hiding her OCD well, but... I find that hard to believe
honestly.
But,
still, I like how Sam started coming out of her shell and started to
grow up a little bit. I imagine that she still has a long way to go
but... she's still only a teenager. I find it encouraging that she let
herself find her voice of positivity and explore it through poetry. I
doubt that it would be possible to keep an actual group, even as small
as it is, hidden from the school... but even just the thought of having
something secret and your own in high school... I can relate to that.
The
ending was a little bit confusing to me though. I won't say what
happened, because I don't want to give spoilers, but it made me wonder
if Sam's really only dealing with OCD... or if she's dealing with
something on top of that and another mental illness. But, as interesting
of a twist the ending was, I just felt like it was kind of thrown out
there. If you read between the lines, though, it's possible to notice
it... but the hints were so faint to me that I never caught on.
Overall,
I really did love this book despite all the nitpicking I've done of it.
The story is about a teenager, who's just trying to seem like a normal
girl on the outside, with OCD while also trying not to get herself out
of the protection of the popular girls clique. After all, I don't think
this book is meant to to be an accurate portrayal of the mental illness.
It helps bring the issue to light and, sometimes, that all you really
need. It's better to have this sort of thing in teen fiction for young
adults to discover rather than them being forced to remain ignorant.
(Originally posted on A Court of Ink and Paper, previously known as Cosying Up With Books)
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