I enjoyed reading this book and getting a look into the mind of a girl with OCD. I liked her journey and felt sympathetic to her. I had a harder time with Thayer, as he seemed to distant, and I never really got attached to him. But I loved the main character, who is the most important anyway. A solid debut! ( )

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, though I knew I was intrigued. The back cover blurb calls it "a haunting exploration of one teen's experience with OCD and Paxil," which kind of makes it sound like an informercial.

I think that's selling a wonderful story very short.

Fin is a high school student. Her parents are divorced, and she and her mother have moved to a new town in a new state. But her outside world isn't all that's out of control. Her mind is, too. She finds herself obsessed with numbers, with counting, with doing things in a precise pattern, and she feels helpless to stop.

Then she meets Thayer, who's even weirder than she is, and the unlikely pair begin a friendship that helps both of them.

Yes, Fin has OCD, and yes, she ends up taking Paxil and we see the effects it has on her, but Total Constant Order is about so much more than that. It's about growing up, about being a teenager--and let's face it, teenagers with or without OCD feel that their lives are beyond their control. It's about facing the problems of life with a friend, about learning when to ask for help, and about discovering that parents are fallible people, too.

In other words, it's a coming-of-age story, not unlike a fairy tale. Only Fin's battling OCD instead of a dragon.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and couldn't put it down. The descriptions of what was going on in Fin's head were so vivid and clear that the lines between "normal" and "crazy," never very distinct to begin with, were blurred, reminding me of the hero's POV from Tod Goldberg's Living Dead Girl. I felt with her the frustration as she tried to get help, and fell a little in love with Thayer along with her.

And at the same time, Fin's mom in particular made me think about parenting and trying to do our best with imperfect knowledge and difficult situations, while being imperfect ourselves.

All in all, a wonderful, relatable story that applies to everyone who is or has been a teenager. ( )

Fin can't stop counting. Voices in her head tell her if she doesn't, something terrible will happen. Although counting didn't stop her parents from getting a divorce. Now her dad has a new girlfriend and Fin is stuck with her mom, who seems to have some OCD tendencies as well. To top it all off, Fin is forced to go to therapy. But her life starts to change when she befriends Thayer, a boy in her class who sees the same therapist. Soon she is able to calm the voices and ignore teh need to count. ( )

Told in first person, Fin struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder and also with her mom, who always seems angry since divorcing and moving to Miami. Her friendship with oddball Thayer helps, and so do her sessions with a psychiatrist, though the medication makes her feel worse and she ends up quitting cold turkey. It bothered me that the doctor, supposedly a responsible professional, never discussed the importance of reporting side effects or the real dangers of quitting without tapering off. But for readers struggling with feelings of being different, this could be a therapeutic read. ( )