A Story That Will Have You Hanging On "Every Last Word"

Every Last WordIf 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.
If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling.  - Goodreads


 My Thoughts

 Who is Sam?
Is she who we think we see?
All glossy hair and painted smiles.
The perfect friends and life unmarred,
by mundane worries and concerns.

Samantha who?
That girl.
You know the one,
who hangs around with those other ones.
But no one else.
Lest their perfect circle of them,
be irreparably shattered,
becoming only splintered shards of mediocrity,
to be trampled by the unwashed and unforgiving masses.

Who is this girl of racing thoughts,
sleepless nights, and friendly thoughts of 3's?
Who hides away the broken hers,
from everyone except herself and the one who helps to shrink the pieces.
Helping them to fit just slightly more into place.

Until the day she learns a secret that sets all the others free.
A secret that allows her not to hide,
behind walls built of fear and secrecy.
A secret telling her to love, to laugh, to be loved in return.
To speak and to be spoken to,
by herself.
By herself.
Not to subtract herself into her broken pieces,
but instead to add herself into the sum of her perfected parts.

This is a poem, written by me, and inspired by EVERY LAST WORD.

In case you were wondering. I loved this book!



Tamara Ireland StoneTAMARA 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. For more information, visit her website at www.TamaraIrelandStone.com

 



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