OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu is about Bea and her struggle with OCD. Bea’s therapist decides that she would benefit from group therapy. She’s afraid that if she tells people about her triggers, everyone will think that all of her problems are little. For example, her anxieties consist of driving, missing her ex-boyfriend, sharp objects because she’s afraid she’ll hurt someone, and she is pretty much stalking the couple in the therapy timeslot before her. They don’t seem like they’re huge problems until Bea starts to share them and realizes just how bad they are. Then Bea meets Beck. Beck is a compulsive hand washer, gym addict, and is obsessed with the number eight and likes Bea because she makes him feel normal. Along their journey of helping their OCD, they fall in love.
The theme of this book seems to be to always have hope. I say this because Bea and Beck have so many problems with themselves, so how could they possibly have time for each other? Bea gets worse and Beck gets better, how will that affect their relationship? They have to have hope for themselves and each other. Kind of like Dr.Pat and Bea. Bea doesn’t really have hope for herself but Dr.Pat has all the faith in the world that Bea will get better and resist her compulsions. Or when Lisha’s parents are having a hard time trying to pay for Lisha’s college of choice, Bea has hope that everything will be okay while Lisha starts going off the deep end.
I think my favorite part of the book is Beck and Beck’s love story. It’s cliche but a little twisted with the OCD part of it. They start off by being friends but then turn into much more. They both feel normal around each other and that is important. They both have to get used to each other’s little quirks like Beck’s hand washing and Bea’s stalkerish tendencies.
I would recommend this book to anybody who is a hopeless romantic. This is the kind of book that could make you cry, give you butterflies, and make you smile. It’s very well written, it’s predictable but in a good way. You kind of know what happens but not to the point where it’s boring. This book is a great read, I think you should read it because it discusses how dangerous mental illnesses can be and based on experience, this book really hits home for me and most likely other people who are going through the same. I learned about OCD and how it’s not always the same with everyone. There are different kinds not everyone is a clean freak. I think the author’s purpose of writing this book is that she wanted to show the struggle of having obsessive compulsive disorder. Haydu doesn’t sugar coat the symptoms like anxiety, depression, stalking, constant exercising, tapping, hair pulling, etc. It was a book that needed to be written. Teenagers with mental illnesses is a touchy subject but people need to know what it’s like to go through it and this book does exactly that.