Welcome to Unpopular Opinion where I'll be sharing my thoughts on a novel I've read. You could be for it or you could be against it.
Progress Tracker
Day 1 - 0% 😁
Day 6 - 11% 🙃🧐
Day 10 - 22% 😕😣
Day 13 38% 😖😩
Day 19 - 49% 🫠🥹
Day 21 - 54% 🤔😬
Day 26 - 69% 😶🌫️
Day 29 - 83% 😦😲🧐
Day 30 - 100% 🙂↕️🥳
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
Today let's talk about the this book that has been in my TBR for a while now. It took me a while to really push through with this, as it wasn't the usual genre I read.
The story started strong for me (because I am into dark themes and psychological aspects of the story, mystery and thriller, suspense maybe). So the opening chapter kinda did it for me, made me think the story was all grim and morbid. But my expectations were not met as soon as I dove into the real story.
Our main character, Samantha McAllister (who prefers to be called Sam later on) has Pure-Obsessional OCD. She constantly worries over what her friends think of her (Crazy Eights), her medication, her thoughts and urges. The day she met Caroline Madsen who led her to Poet's Corner was turning point of Sam's life.
Sam apparently was a swimmer with a hidden talent for poetry. Upon joining Poet's Corner for the first time, she was (immediately) captivated by AJ Olsen playing his guitar on stage.
The plot was nice, it felt relatable in a way, not because I have OCD. But because there were aspects of the way Sam lives that I also experienced or was struggling with. And that was pretty much what got pushed me to finish the book.
I wasn't a fan of the romance in the novel. Why did AJ fell in love with Sam? I wasn't not sure I understood how the chemistry happened. It was nice of him to be very supportive and understanding of Sam, but how? Why? What made him fall in love with his former bully? Maybe he forgave her. Maybe if Sam did something incredibly significant other than join Poet's Corner and share her poetry that caught AJ's attention. I don't know, maybe it was just me.
The book focusing on Sam's struggles and breakthroughs could do well even if AJ was just a friend.
Not that I knew anything about OCD except the bits I remembered from a high school classmate, but Sam's felt like it was inconsistent. What caught made me want to read this book is the opening chapter, but I didn't really see any thoughts like that since. Maybe because she got better or because of the medication, and there was a timeskip. She had an obsession or interest in boys (didn't expect she'd be the type to date many boys or kissed many) and Brandon, whom I never saw again lol.
I'm not a fan of slow-burn and I guess that's what affects my taste in genre and theme. The normalcy, the school drama, the mean girls and the secret club. I do watch drama, just not this kind I suppose.
You could see in my reading tracker how difficult it was to move forward. Things thankfully picked up at the 80% marker when the plot twist was revealed.
Caroline Madsen not existing, and just being in Sam's head was actually surprising. While I think it could have had more impact if there were actual scenes of Sam's discovery and not just a summary. Like if she knew it was odd Caroline hadn't texted her before, maybe a single line somewhere in the midst of Sam's daily life could have been a nice easter egg for readers. And the source where Sam got the idea of Caroline was a bit out of nowhere (for me at least).
There's Cassidy at the beginning and comes back as a memory whom Sam was with when they did a research on Caroline Madsen and why Sam somehow picked up this person and made it into her imaginary friend. No problem if that were the case, but yeah, it felt like a convenient insert. Then again, this wasn't a mystery book to begin with.
Other than that though, this plot twist helped me binge-read the book to finally reach the finish line.
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