Tuesday 18 August 2015

The Unlikely Hero of Room 13b by Teresa Toten

Adam Ross has a real problem with OCD. He goes to weekly support group meetings that he hopes will one day "cure" him. Then one day a gorgeous girl walks in, and her name is Robyn Plummer. Adam immediately falls under her spell. But with his threshold and ritual issues, his mom's hoarding problems at home, plus the divorce, Adam doesn't know how he'll manage to win over Robyn. Not to mention the threatening emails his mom has been getting...
________________________________________________________________________________________

I think that this book has some interesting qualities about it that made me enjoy this book. First of all, I was intrigued about Adam's OCD issues; for example, every time he walks into certain buildings and through certain doors, Adam needs to perform rituals in order to 'safely' walk in. He has to tap out specific patterns and execute movements so precise that if he makes a mistake he'll have to start all over again. Some people may find these parts repetitive as they do happen often, but I enjoyed reading them. 

However, this book did have some not-so-good qualities that I thought dragged on the story and at some points made it frustrating and boring to read. For example, Adam's mother, Carmella, has a hoarding problem and she and Adam live alone together. I personally think that Adam wishes to get away from the bad environment at his mom's house and she just drags him down with her, pleading him not to tell anyone or she'll be taken away. This worsens Adam's OCD problem because he's always stressing about his mom and Carmella makes him feel guilty about staying over a this dad's on the weekends, where the environment is better and you can tell Adam is a lot happier. For this reason I felt very frustrated with Adam's mom. Also, what happens at the end, (no spoilers) confirmed my frustration.
All in all, it was enjoyable, but the boring parts in the middle made it that much harder to like. One things that I thought this book did well was explain OCD and it helped me understand the what people are going through. Not many books talk about OCD so I thought that was a unique factor. 

Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Pages: 262
Author: Teresa Toten
Published: 2013


No comments:

Post a Comment