ARC Review: Every Last Word - Tamara Ireland Stone

Title: Every Last Word
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone
Pub Date: June 16th, 2015
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Page Count: 368

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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Most of this book was average; I enjoyed it but it didn't blow my mind, that is, until it got closer to the end. That's when transformed from average into unforgettable. - Nova @ Out of Time

I didn't see anything interesting with the main character in the beginning. I found her to be pretty boring, even though she had panic attacks and some of her thoughts were alarming. It's a little scary, then, that after a while, I started to understand and connect with her. Some of the things she thought that I'd written off as "crazy" were/are things I've thought and then I started to love her.

Have you ever been trapped with people who are so different from you? Because with her friends, Samantha was a lot more quiet and reserved. Anyone could see that it wasn't her "true" personality and besides me, I feel like a lot of people can relate to that. It's a bit of a cliche that right after feeling like she doesn't fit in, she finds a group that makes her feel the complete opposite. The poetry club is reminiscent to something I understand, which is why the entire plot was something that felt like a chapter from my lie.

Basically, while I was in a "rut," I created an Instagram account to post poetry. In my other blog post, Messages from a Girl Who Writes Poetry, I link it there. Anyway, a girl with a huge number of followers reached out to me and we would talk until midnight, even though she lived a thousand miles away. Like Sam, I was completely alone for awhile until a girl like Caroline [from the book] reached out and helped me. Except, the person who helped me was known as, "Rosie."

This is the kind of book that gives comfort to the reader. The characters in the poetry corner were so supportive of each other and I got the feeling that they cared so much about Sam, even though she was new. Dealing with mental illness requires an extreme amount of care and understanding and I think Tamara Ireland Stone nailed it with this novel.

The part that completely changed this book, however was the part when Caroline is revealed to be a figment of Sam's imagination. First, when it's revealed, it finally dawned on me how much that made sense. All evidence pointed to that as a logical explanation but I didn't see it. It's also so powerful, if you think about it, that everything Sam did, that she thought she was forced to do by Caroline came from her own strength. It's actually really inspiring how she created a person to help her become strong and that figment furthered her character arc. Loved it.

The romance was alright because it was cute but only alright because it didn't do anything for me. I thought it was cute but it also moved a bit fast. There was a genuine feeling between Sam and AJ but this novel is without a doubt, about Sam and her mental battles so the romance did take more of a back seat, which I really admired. Books that deal with issues can either deal with the issue mainly or be cluttered with drama and such. Both can be fine but I really prefer the first and for that, I highly recommend this novel.

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TAMARA IRELAND STONE is the author of Time After Time and Time Between Us, which has been published in over twenty countries to widespread acclaim, and hailed as "an exciting debut novel" by Booklist and "a warm, time bending romance" by Publishers Weekly. It has been optioned for film by CBS Films.

Her next novel, Every Last Word, is about a teen girl with OCD who's hiding part of herself from the world, until she discovers a secret poetry club that changes her in unexpected ways. Every Last Word releases on June 16, 2015.

A former Silicon Valley marketing executive, Tamara enjoys skiing, hiking, and spending time with her husband and two children. She lives just outside of San Francisco.