Plot Overview: High School Junior Samantha McAllister deals with her OCD while attempting to keep it a secret from her popular friends.

Critique: I thought this book did a pretty good job of characterizing mental illness which is always nice to see. Often with YA novels, the depiction of mental illnesses like depression or anxiety can be quite trite, but I didn’t feel like it was like that with this one. It also had a big twist near the end that was genuinely shocking. I had to put the book down for a couple of minutes to comprehend what had just happened, which really doesn’t happen often for me. It did a little poorly at capturing what high school is actually like, but to be fair I’ve read far, far less accurate depictions of high schoolers.

Cover Critique: The cover is pretty minimal, only showing a couple of slips of paper. I think it fits the novel well, though, and it is actually quite thoughtful.

Star Rating: 3.5/5