Every Last Word - Tamara Ireland Stone

[goodreads]

Title: Every Last Word
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone
Genre: YA
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 368
Date read: April 2015, October 2020

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.


Beautifully written, poignant and real. I'm finding it very difficult to talk about this book without squeeing all over the place, but I don't want to hype it too much, so I will try to restrain myself.

I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley, and pretty much had no idea what to expect - I just liked the cover - but I quickly realized that this was right up my aisle. I loved the writing style, and the plot is YA when it's best. I really liked Sam and the rest of the Poet's Corner, and found a lot of the poetry really brilliant. Especially nearer the end - it was clear that people improved.

I also appreciated reading a book about OCD where the focus was more on the obsessive part than the compulsion part - i.e. more a brain that cannot be turned off, than specifically having to do certain things.

Mostly I loved the ending, and as I finished the last page, I had tears (good tears) running down my cheeks. Definitely a book I'll want to reread.