With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, it can be challenging to come up with the perfect gift to show your friends how much you care. Gift-giving can be even harder for friends than for partners, as you want something special that won’t break the bank. Check out last week’s blog post for some ideas.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
This week’s post is for OCDaniel by Wesley King. Yay for YA books exploring mental illnesses like OCD. King has mirrored his own childhood/teenage experience of growing up with OCD without understanding what it was, keeping it hidden from everyone including his parents. Main character Daniel comes to understand OCD through his friend and a book that she gives him, and gradually comes to accept who he is and that this is something he can share with his family and get their help and support.
King throws in a few subplots as well—Daniel’s part in the school football team playoffs, the two girls he is interested in, and an investigation into the possible murder of his friend’s father, all popular tropes in YA literature.
“…What do you have to lose?”
Wesley King, OCDaniel
“My dignity, pride, and self-respect.”
Summary
Daniel is the back-up punter for the Erie Hills Elephants. Which really means he’s the water boy. He spends football practice perfectly arranging water cups—and hoping no one notices. Actually, he spends most of his time hoping no one notices his strange habits—he calls them Zaps: avoiding writing the number four, for example, or flipping a light switch on and off dozens of times over. He hopes no one notices that he’s crazy, especially his best friend Max, and Raya, the prettiest girl in school. His life gets weirder when another girl at school, who is unkindly nicknamed Psycho Sara, notices him for the first time. She doesn’t just notice him: she seems to peer through him.
Then Daniel gets a note: “I need your help,” it says, signed, Fellow Star Child—whatever that means. And suddenly Daniel, a total no one at school, is swept up in a mystery that might change everything for him.
With great voice and grand adventure, this book is about feeling different and finding those who understand.
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