Compulsion by Heidi Ayarbe
Review by: Lauren
Copy From: http://www.teensreadtoo.com
Summary: Jake is a teen trying to live his life, but his OCD makes it difficult to appear normal. His only real friend is Luc, and he even knows that Jake has something going on with him. But Jake keeps it hidden. He tries to be the soccer champ everyone wants him to be and his sister helps him appear put together in front of his father…whose broken down by his wife, who deals with her own OCD.
Review: Jake has an obsession with numbers. This is something that starts almost every new section and chapter throughout the book. It definitely starts to grate on you as you read, but I think that’s part of the point. You get a small peak into the madness of Jake’s mind and what he must deal with. I’m pretty sure I have some form of OCD, so I could definitely relate to the repetition of things in your head and how you just want to MAKE.IT.STOP.
The overall story is how Jake is desperate to win his upcoming soccer championship. The numbers stop when he plays, and if he can win…he might be able to make the “magic” last and be “normal” for once. Everyone thinks that Jake is some sort of star, but he’s just trying to hold on. It was interesting to see inside his family life and how his little sister has to protect him, and how he wishes desperately to help her, and how their father tries to block out the bad, and how their mother is dealing with her own mental issues and how it all affects the way they live. Wow. Long sentence. But that’s just it. It’s kind of a circle of life they live in, without fully opening up and showing they need help.
Not everything changes in the end. I suppose it can’t. But it gets better in ways. It gets closer to a happy ending.
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