Every Last Word

Every Last Word tells the story of high-school junior Samantha – Sam. She suffers from Purely-Obsessive OCD but doesn’t want anybody to find out about it. She’s part of this group of popular girls, her so called ‘friends’ she’s known since middle school. But even from them, Sam hides a secret.

The story starts off with a flashback of an event that Sam doesn’t really wants to be reminded of. It’s the kind of flashback that makes shivers run down your spine. The flashback was a thrilling start and just made a point: this book will have you hooked until the end. I mean, seriously: the flashback at the beginning is genius. It will get you, as a reader, immediately involved with the story.

The flashback is only one chapter, so the second chapter is about Samantha, being obsessed with the number three. When she’s driving and has to park, the odometer has to be at three, or she will just drive another block just to make sure the three pops up when she shuts down the motor. And this is just one of the examples of OCD that Tamara describes perfectly in the book. Until this very moment, I didn’t really have an insight into OCD. It’s a pretty complicated mental health disorder but I think Tamara has put down a realistic character that speaks for a lot of people suffering from this disease.

The story really elaborates the struggles with her disease, as she finds out that keeping it a secret from her so called friends is pretty hard. But then she finds the Poet’s Corner and Caroline, and everything seems fine for a while – until at 4/5 of the book when a MAJOR plot twist will hit you. You won’t see it coming and it will make you emotional.

Every Last Word really knows how to depict a teenager’s life: school work, family, sports and relations with friends and boyfriends. Even though there must’ve been a thousand books written about teenagers and high school, this one seems to stand out because of its reality. This reality forms a connection with Sam’s mind. In literary terms, one could call it ‘the stream of consciousness’, in which you can follow the thoughts of a character. This was a big part of Every Last Word, and even though it sounds complicated, Tamara really elaborates the subject and adds a little bit of humor to lighten up such a ‘dark’ (mind me saying that Tamara also points out that having OCD, means you’re brain is special, not crazy?!) mental disorder.

I’m trying really hard to come up with something that I thought could’ve made the book even better, but I don’t think anything should be changed about either the book or the character Sam. Sam is a lovely character and you will find yourself rooting for her. She’s real, she’s honest and you will feel the conflict in her mind, as if it’s your own battle.

Every Last Word has been, so far, the best and most emotional read of 2015 – it got me hooked from the very first page. I found myself laughing and even crying real tears at the end of the book. This story has a special place in my heart.

What I Loved:
I was not expecting to love Every Last Word as much as I did. I’ve been in a contemporary slump lately where every one I read I enjoy, but I don’t have super strong feelings about them. I found Every Last Word to be a breath of fresh air in the genre.

I instantly connected to Sam. Everyone has something they want to hide, even from their closest friends, and I empathized with her desire to keep her secret from her glittery, popular clique. She also just wants to feel “normal,” something that I struggled with in high school as well. Sam felt so real to me because all of her emotions felt familiar, like they could’ve been a part of mine or my friends’ high school lives.

I also adored her new-found friends in Poet’s Corner. Every one was so unique and yet they all shared these secret poetry sessions that made them into a family. Poet’s Corner is an escape, but it’s also where you find your true self, and I wish we had had something similar in my school. Hell, even now I would want to join a secret poetry club!

I think it’s so important that stories like Sam’s are given a bigger place in mainstream media. Every Last Word is a story about living with a mental illness. Sam has a therapist, she takes medication, and her parents are trained on how to handle situations when Sam feels overwhelmed or out of control. She has a set treatment plan that works (and that she and her therapist worked on together and continue to develop as Sam grows), and a therapist who is portrayed in a positive light and I think that all of that is so important. Sam struggles throughout the book with the idea of “normal.” She wants to feel that way and doesn’t see herself as such. But by the end, she realizes that there are all kinds of “normal.”

The Final Verdict:
Every Last Word is an emotional, realistic, and important contemporary YA novel that every reader should get their hands on.