Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

Summary:
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.

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Often All

Sometimes when you start reading a book, it captures your soul in a way that no other book has done before. This is what happened to me when I started reading Every Last Word. It spoke to me in ways that very few books have done in recent months. There was just something so wonderful about this book that I truly related to and found exceptional. I could fully connect and appreciate the main character of the story and the journey that she finds herself on. I also feel this book would be brilliant for anyone wanting to understand just a little more about OCD and how it can affect a person’s life.

You Need

This book follows Sam as she deals with slipping away from her friends. It’s a brilliant, addictive, and stunning book that really pulls the reader in. I became enamored with the secret poet society that she stumbles across, love the way she slowly opens herself up and was absolutely floored by the ending. Tamara Ireland Stone has written a very hard-hitting and intense book that really gets down in to the dark crevices of mental health, being a teenager and learning to deal with the world, one step at a time.

Is To Believe

I cannot describe enough how much I absolutely adored all of the characters in this book but I really, really loved Sam. She was portrayed so well, written beautifully and was wonderfully flawed to boot. I loved how her confidence grew and how she learnt to open her world to other people. I admired her strength as she battled her OCD many times over and how she learnt to deal with overcoming the boundaries that her mind gives her every single day. She is a strong, inspiring and heartfelt character that I will look up to for many years to come.

In Yourself

Every Last Word was a spellbinding read that stole my heart – in case you didn’t quite get that yet. It was hard-hitting, realistic and just brilliant. I’m really trying hard not to gush too much but this book well and truly stuck in my heart like glue. It is a powerful, emotional, lovely read that just really puts forth a strong message of hope, strength, love, friendships and relationships. It is a book that I will definitely be reading again and one that I would highly recommend others read!