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by Tamara Ireland Stone
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.
"Clueless meets Dead Poets Society with a whopping final twist." —Kirkus Reviews
"A thoughtful romance with a strong message about self-acceptance, [this] sensitive novel boasts strong characterizations and conflicts that many teens will relate to. Eminently readable." —Booklist
"A brilliant and moving story about finding your voice, the power of words, and true friendship. I couldn't put it down " —Elizabeth Eulberg, Author of The Lonely Hearts Club
"A riveting story of love, true friendship, self-doubt and self-confidence, overcoming obstacles, and truly finding oneself." —Melanie Koss, Professor of Young Adult Literature, Northern Illinois University
This information about Every Last Word was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tamara Ireland Stone spent nearly two decades in the technology industry before she began writing fiction. She loved her first career but finds writing for kids and teens especially rewarding.
Her New York Times bestseller Every Last Word won the Cybils Young Adult Fiction Award and the Georgia Peach Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Little Do We Know won the NCIBA Golden Poppy Award for Young Adult Fiction, and her debut novel Time Between Us has been published in over twenty languages. Click'd the first book in her middle-grade series, is a Sunshine State Young Readers Award pick, a Kids' Indie Next pick, a Truman Award Nominee, and an NCIBA Golden Poppy nominee.
Tamara lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a proud nerd, vinyl collector, and movie lover. She burns everything she cooks.
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