Welcome to one of my first written reviews in a while! I hope to review pretty much every book I read this summer so hopeful there are a lot more of these to come.

And this is a spoiler filled review, so read at your own risk.

Our main character is Bea, and she suffers from OCD. Her best friend is named Lisha and she’s the ‘smart’ one. Bea’s love interest is named Beck, he also suffers from OCD. During the course of this book Bea ends up stalking a young couple name Austin and Sylvia. Throughout this book Bea’s condition begins worsening before slowly getting better towards the end. We learn Bea is attending therapy for stalking her ex-boyfriend, Kurt and ends up learning of Austin and Sylvia there. They have the session before her and she starts showing up early to record their sessions in her notebook, and the stalking escalates from there. I gave this book a 3 out of 5 stars.

Okay, Bea. Bea is exhausting, and a little bit of a bitch. It was really, really exhausting being in her brain. She’s uber obsessive. One of the most annoying quirks about her was her driving. She’s 17 and therefore has her license, but she’s a super nervous driver. She rarely drives over 30 mph and it takes her like an hour to drive ten miles, or something ridiculous like that. She also has this issue with anyone being around her while she’s driving. There’s this one scene where she’s driving through a neighborhood and she passes up a little girl walking her dog, and a soon as the little girl is out of sight she convinces herself that she has run over the little girl and ends up basically following the little girl home to be sure that she hasn’t run her over. This kind of thing happens over and over. On the bitch side of things, she’s horrible to her best friend Lisha. There are several times in the book where Bea points out her friends plainess, and says that if Lisha would only change herself then she could probably get a boyfriend. She basically puts Lisha down to make herself feel better. Lisa likes to wear pieces of Catholic school girl outfits, because she likes the style and Bea makes fun of her for it. “The tie (navy, skinny, loosely knotted) is sort of a sad attempt to be noticed.” Bea is really just a horrible friend to Lisha. “Lisha needs a television. Or another friend.” Ugh, she made me so mad with comments like this. But she also makes some uncomfortable comments about her boyfriend Beck. “It’s sexy-the compromised, drugged-out state he’s in.” This comment just struck me the wrong way. I can’t exactly explain why, but it just seems wrong. Like the fact that he’s compromised is attractive? Um, no. Maybe it’s just me, but he doesn’t seem to actively give consent for the make-out session that follows. In fact, she uses the words “gives in” as though he wasn’t really open to kissing her in the first place. This whole scene just seemed awkward and wrong. The whole Jeff thing. It just seemed really anti-climactic. The way it’s set up throughout the book makes it seem as though he raped her or abuse her personally, not stabbed some guy she didn’t even known. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it would still be traumatic, but I don’t think the story was properly foreshadowing it, if that makes any sense.

Sadly, Lisha isn’t much better. She’s definitely an enabler for Bea and doesn’t question or try to help her through her OCD tendencies. At one point she even helps Bea stalk Austin and Sylvia, full knowing that Bea has OCD. But she is the one who hands in the notebook, so she has that going for her. She is a bit of a bitch herself though when she is really unaccepting of Beck and his OCD and actually asks Bea to escort him out of her ballet recital because he was drawing too much attention. I didn’t really like her at all and I wasn’t really invested in her storyline.

My favorite character was definitely Dr. Pat which is kind of sad, given that she’s sort of portrayed as the antagonist. She just seemed to be the most helpful of the characters and she was definitely helping them the most. She was pivotal in Bea and Beck’s recovery whereas they just enabled each other.

The whole story is set in the Boston area in modern times.

My overall impression of this story isn’t really a good one. It was completely exhausting to read and has put me in a horrible mood for the past two days. It did give me a better understanding of what it truly means to have OCD, but that is really the only benefit of reading it. I wasn’t invested in the characters. I hated Bea and Beck’s relationship, they didn’t help each other at all and Beck was kind of an ass. I was really close to DNFing it, I think the only reason I finished it was because I read a review online that said they ended up getting better and I wanted to read that part so I got some sort of closure and I wasn’t just left with the muck that is the middle of the book. I only gave it 3 stars because it was some what informative, and like I said, it gave me a better understanding of the affliction. I wouldn’t recommend this. It is just so exhausting and not worth your time. It wasn’t like the Book Thief where it makes you sad, but a good sad. This book just left me drowning in the murk of bad thoughts and a horrible mood. I don’t think I will end up reading more from this author either. This book just left a horrible impression on me and I don’t want to put myself through anything like it again. I’m not sure I’m even going to keep the book either. I hardly ever get rid of books, but I don’t think I can stand the thought of this sitting on my shelf any longer. I’ll make a couple of bucks off it at Half-Price Books…

Anyways, happy reading guys!
-Jordan