By: Tamara Ireland Stone
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.
This book holds a very dear place in my heart. When I heard one of my favorite authors was writing a book that surrounds OCD instantly in my mind I already bought it. The pages, the words, the raw emotion of the main character Sam is what I went through middle school and up to freshman year. Even now I experience a few episodes here and there. Every Last Word though brilliantly displayed what a person with anxiety and OCD goes through and the power within ones self to overcome the illness.
The very first sentence of the synopsis hooked me in. "If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling." That's such a powerful statement. And it accurately describes people and how we always judge from the outside. The saying goes and will always be true, "You never know what someone is going through."
“Everyone’s got something. Some people are just better actors than others.”
― Tamara Ireland Stone, Every Last Word
And the story isn't all just tears and emotion and serious, it has the classic love story twist into it; with a very cute boy that I wish would come straight out of the pages and into my own little poets corner.
Funny lines litter each page and makes you laugh and smile while reading. My mom poked her head in my room and saw me laughing while reading and asked me what was so funny.
“Crappy mall food cures everything.”
― Tamara Ireland Stone, Every Last Word
I bought this book and finished it the day I got it. I am and was absolutely enthralled in it and always recommend it whenever I get asked for suggestions at work or at home. Forever a 5/5 for me. Thank you Tamara for writing such a beautiful piece of artwork.
In the words of Sam, I leave you with these three: Love. This. Book.
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