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A review by goosemixtapes
OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu
3.0
i will admit i have some conflicting feelings about this one, which is inevitable, because OCD is one of those topics i'm incapable of shutting the fuck up about. my tl;dr is that i'd give this 3.5 stars and i agree with basically everything said in this review. my other scattered thoughts are as follows:
>i was never sure how much i actually liked bea. i could empathize with her, of course, but every once in a while she'd say or do something that had me squinting. i don't even mean the stalking, because that's clearly a compulsion, or the internalized ableism, because that's to some degree deconstructed; i mean, like, kissing a guy right after he has a panic attack, or saying that it's sexy to see him drugged up on anxiety meds.
>i say the internalized ableism is deconstructed to some degree. not fully. and, IMO, that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that lisha does not feel nearly held responsible for her ableism. i do think she did the right thing in the end by, and i'm not even blaming her for being exhausted by her friendship with bea, because dealing with OCD is exhausting for the sufferer and the people around them! i also understand that i'm predisposed to fucking hate lisha because i'm very sensitive about the way neurotypical people perceive OCD! but ohhhh my fucking god. this girl really called beck a freak repeatedly and continuously antagonized him and also talked about wanting to make "normal" friends at college and then we BARELY EVER CAME BACK TO THAT and . on god i've never wanted to beat up a YA best friend character this bad
>beck... i like beck. i have very soft feelings toward beck. i think that's in part because he and i have some of the same compulsions; it was very strange and tender to read about him because it was sort of like reading about myself in the third-person, and the fact that the narrative treats him with clear empathy meant a lot.
>this book never had me in a stranglehold the way turtles all the way down did (i think it's impressive that i've gone this long in this review without mentioning that book because it's the only other book i've ever read about OCD that actually worked for me), but it definitely does Get It. (i was never fully triggered, but some of this was exhausting to read; my brain got a little skittery.) which i was kind of pleasantly surprised about! honestly, i'm not sure the summary sells this book very well - even the cover is full of repetitions of "i will not stalk that boy," but there's no love triangle here and bea arguably never has romantic/sexual feelings for the object of her stalking, which is very clearly a compulsion and driven by runaway anxiety. + the romance, while it exists, is definitely backseat to the mental health aspect.
>and yet... i honestly just wish this book had gone FURTHER with the mental health stuff. not even, necessarily, in representation of bea's symptoms (in the beginning it felt much more focused on her external compulsions instead of the thought processes driving them, but that evened out as we went on), but in the recovery process. i'm very iffy about how this book presents exposure therapy; i know my experience isn't 1:1 with everyone else's, but bea's exposure therapy seems... rather too sudden and too fast. rather than easing her into anything, her therapist really kind of just... shoves her right at the problem. and it works! very fast! faster than maybe it should! the last chapter of the book in particular felt like a strange time-skip to bea being Abruptly Much Better, which was cheering to see, but i wasn't entirely sure the book had earned it. also, like, let's get into some of the other stuff glossed over! let's get into lisha's drinking issues! let's get into rudy and fawn and jenny! let's take it a little further and get a little deeper and grittier!
overall, though, despite my gripes, i think this is a pretty good book, both in general and about OCD. like, if i met a neurotypical person whose main exposure to actual non-sensationalized OCD was this book, i'd be able to work with that, i think. that would be just fine. also, i read this in four days and would have finished it faster if not for school, so that's a point in its favor, i'd say.
>i was never sure how much i actually liked bea. i could empathize with her, of course, but every once in a while she'd say or do something that had me squinting. i don't even mean the stalking, because that's clearly a compulsion, or the internalized ableism, because that's to some degree deconstructed; i mean, like, kissing a guy right after he has a panic attack, or saying that it's sexy to see him drugged up on anxiety meds.
>i say the internalized ableism is deconstructed to some degree. not fully. and, IMO, that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that lisha does not feel nearly held responsible for her ableism. i do think she did the right thing in the end by
Spoiler
handing in bea's journalSpoiler
the very last chapter saw bea and lisha friends again after the world's most half-assed apology>beck... i like beck. i have very soft feelings toward beck. i think that's in part because he and i have some of the same compulsions; it was very strange and tender to read about him because it was sort of like reading about myself in the third-person, and the fact that the narrative treats him with clear empathy meant a lot.
>this book never had me in a stranglehold the way turtles all the way down did (i think it's impressive that i've gone this long in this review without mentioning that book because it's the only other book i've ever read about OCD that actually worked for me), but it definitely does Get It. (i was never fully triggered, but some of this was exhausting to read; my brain got a little skittery.) which i was kind of pleasantly surprised about! honestly, i'm not sure the summary sells this book very well - even the cover is full of repetitions of "i will not stalk that boy," but there's no love triangle here and bea arguably never has romantic/sexual feelings for the object of her stalking, which is very clearly a compulsion and driven by runaway anxiety. + the romance, while it exists, is definitely backseat to the mental health aspect.
>and yet... i honestly just wish this book had gone FURTHER with the mental health stuff. not even, necessarily, in representation of bea's symptoms (in the beginning it felt much more focused on her external compulsions instead of the thought processes driving them, but that evened out as we went on), but in the recovery process. i'm very iffy about how this book presents exposure therapy; i know my experience isn't 1:1 with everyone else's, but bea's exposure therapy seems... rather too sudden and too fast. rather than easing her into anything, her therapist really kind of just... shoves her right at the problem. and it works! very fast! faster than maybe it should! the last chapter of the book in particular felt like a strange time-skip to bea being Abruptly Much Better, which was cheering to see, but i wasn't entirely sure the book had earned it. also, like, let's get into some of the other stuff glossed over! let's get into lisha's drinking issues! let's get into rudy and fawn and jenny! let's take it a little further and get a little deeper and grittier!
overall, though, despite my gripes, i think this is a pretty good book, both in general and about OCD. like, if i met a neurotypical person whose main exposure to actual non-sensationalized OCD was this book, i'd be able to work with that, i think. that would be just fine. also, i read this in four days and would have finished it faster if not for school, so that's a point in its favor, i'd say.