OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Released on July 23, 2013

When Bea meets Beck, she knows instantly that he’s her kind of crazy. Sweet, strong, kind of-messed-up Beck understands her like no one else can. He makes her feel almost normal. He makes her feel like she could fall in love again.
But despite her feelings for Beck, Bea can’t stop thinking about someone else: a guy who is gorgeous and magnetic... and has no idea Bea even exists. But Bea knows a lot about him. She spends a lot of time watching him. She has a journal full of notes. Some might even say she’s obsessed.
Bea tells herself she’s got it all under control. But this isn’t a choice, it’s a compulsion. The truth is, she’s breaking down...and she might end up breaking her own heart.(from Goodreads)

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I was not at all prepared for what I got when I started reading OCD Love Story. I expected to maybe get a girl that was a bit obsessed with a guy and became a little creeper stalker but I didn’t think I would get so much more than that and not at all a typical love story but something deeper and much more meaningful.

In the story we have poor Bea who is this crazy tough acting girl that seems a little quirky at the beginning until you get deeper into the novel and you begin to realize that she has serious problems. At first I wasn’t aware at all that OCD was anything else besides people being a bit obsessive over certain things, like having to do things a certain number of times or washing their hands constantly. Well, just like Bea I was in for a good amount of learning in this book, while reading it we begin to see the other side of Bea, the side that she tries to hide well but is not completely successful at, the side that she doesn’t fully want to accept as a problem.

I was completely taken by surprised by this book and how much I ended up liking it even though it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. Once I got to know Bea a bit more and saw her daily routines and all the things that went through her head and how hard it was for her to not do things a certain way, I felt horrible for her, you can’t help but want to hug this girl tightly. I couldn’t imagine how exhausting life could be for someone with OCD like Bea. The novel became more about her and less about the supposedly love story I expected to get from it, and honestly I didn’t even care, I was so immersed in Bea’s thoughts and feelings through the novel that I was glued to every word and had a tight grip on the book. The well written characters and the development of the story helped a lot, the emotions came through so vividly that I even cried for this poor girl and even felt like I thought she was feeling, desperate and helpless. This was such an intense novel for me but so great that I felt a bit liberated by the end of it and also a bit sad to let Bea go. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a contemporary that’s both entertaining but will also make your brain work. I’m looking forward to reading more from the talented Corey Ann Haydu.