Bea has OCD.

Bea doesn’t identify as someone with OCD. She doesn’t exhibit a lot of the trademark signs of the mental illness — she doesn’t really have compulsions or obsessions. Or at least, she tells herself she doesn’t, and by extension, she convinces us as readers she doesn’t have them. But slowly, as OCD Love Story unravels, Bea comes around to the idea that the things she does which other people don’t do are precisely what mark her illness.

It’s a school dance, and Bea’s at the local all-boys academy. When the power dies, she finds herself sitting beside a boy with whom she strikes up an immediate conversation and kinship. She can’t see Beck, but she knows she likes him right away. Even though he’s tentative about her seeing him, she pushes. She wants to know who this boy is. But when the lights come back on, she’s lost him and she knows nothing of him except his name. Maybe she’ll see him again. Maybe not.

When Bea shows up for her next therapy appointment, it’s all routine: she gets there early enough to grab the seat nearest Dr. Pat’s office, where she can listen to the session before hers. It’s a couple — Austin and Sylvia — and they’re having issues. Bea takes copious notes about them, including what they’re saying to one another, what their challenges might be, what she imagines their life at home must feel like. As Dr. Pat calls her into the office that day, she drops not only the bomb that she’s suspecting Bea’s challenges are due to OCD (and specifically the compulsions) and worse, Bea’s going to start going to group therapy. Such therapy would be good because it would allow for meeting other people who are suffering with similar problems and more importantly, it would provide her an opportunity for exposure therapy.

And it’s at the first group therapy session when Bea reunites with Beck. How many local boys have that name? She recognizes his voice. She recognizes him as him.

Beck has OCD. The things he told her about the night at the dance make sense. And more than that, Bea becomes aware of how his OCD manifests quite quickly. Their first “date” happens when Beck asks her to take him to the gym after therapy. Because he told his mother his sessions lasted three hours, when really, they were more like an hour. Those additional two hours were for his working out.

Even though she sees it immediately in him, Bea is blind to how her own OCD manifests. We as readers are blind to this for a long time, too. She is an expert at hiding it and revealing it to herself — and us by extension — slowly. Rather than tell us, rather than even showing us, she experiences it, and as readers, we experience it right along with her. We are there as she drives to Austin and Sylvia’s house over and over. We are there as she pinches her thigh hard to stop herself from acting upon something. We are there as she panics when she starts to drive and when she has to pull over. We are there when she tells us about the scrapbook from the boy who did something violent. As Bea has her ah ha moments thinking about her past, particularly when she tells us why it is she ended up in Dr. Pat’s office for therapy, we see more of the backstory. We see more of the forward progress in these moments, as well.

Bea is very sick, but she doesn’t show it off in the ways people would expect of someone with OCD. She fixates on people and on their lives. She stalks people she becomes fascinated with, even at the expense of those relationships in her life which are good and strong. Bea has a solid family unit, and she has a great best friend. But those are things she can’t wrap her mind around. She sees other people’s lives as so much more interesting and so much better than her own, even when it’s clear they are not. But she fears tremendously that things could change in an instant. She worries about sharp objects, about violence, about glass and knives and the pain they could potentially inflict upon anyone she loves and cares about.

She does have a huge moment later in the story recognizing this — and it’s one of the most painful moments of exposure therapy that she could have never planned. When she comes to understand that the image in her head of Austin and Sylvia’s rock star life isn’t what she’d imagined, Bea has her understanding of just how ill she is and yet at the same time, just how okay she is.

OCD Love Story has a bit of a misleading cover. This isn’t a light-hearted romance. There is indeed a budding romance here, and there’s sex and talk about sex (Bea’s not really ashamed of being sexually active), but I wouldn’t call what Bea and Beck experience traditional in any way. Those looking for a romance won’t really find it here — there isn’t hand holding, there aren’t first kisses, there aren’t moments that are really swoon-worthy. In many ways, I’d argue that almost makes the romance more authentic, but that’s to the real world, rather than the fictional world.


OCD Love Story does not have a misleading title, though: this is a love story through and through. It’s a love story to Bea coming to understand herself and coming to love herself, despite the very serious issues she’s tackling with internally. It’s Bea wrestling with loving those who are around her and support her because of and in spite of these things. Lish, her best friend, is an excellent friend. Haydu took serious time to craft a fully-fleshed cast of supporting characters in Bea’s life, and even though her lens is skewed throughout, we as readers recognize this skewed perception. She allows us this, telling us in one breath than Lish is doing something really nice for her and then immediately questioning whether Lish is sick of her or is just being nice because she feels obligated to do so.

Haydu’s writing is strong. Bea’s got a great voice, and she’s convincing in how she presents herself both to herself and to us as readers. She doesn’t seem sick. But slowly, she breaks. And as she breaks, it’s not because she’s presenting readers a show. It’s because she’s realizing she herself isn’t strong enough to keep up the charade, and she knows she doesn’t need to be (I think we can attribute part of that to her relationship with Beck — he’s never there to save her, but she’s there beside him as he struggles with his problems and she realizes it’s okay to be weak and allow people in when she needs it). This book will get under your skin as you watch someone who appears so strong crumble a little bit. Then crumble a bit more. Then break completely. And yet, as you watch this happen, you can’t help but feel like it’s going to be okay for her. There will be a bottom to the fall, but there’s a nice net there to catch Bea. The craft here is solid.

Pass OCD Love Story to those readers who want a straight on, unashamed look at mental illness. This is the kind of book that will realign their thoughts on what OCD is — it’s not just one of those challenges that can be the butt of a joke. You don’t have OCD if you check your alarm’s settings three times before bed every night. It’s not something that is easily recognized by those suffering, and Haydu does immense service to that with Bea. In many ways, this book is scary. It’s scary to experience the suffering right along with a character in a way that feels like it’s happening to you, too. In many ways it’s voyeuristic, but it’s through this lens that the book is so successful and powerful. An excellent, worthwhile debut novel. I’m eager to see where Haydu will go next.

I liked this book so much I called it my July favorite over at Book Riot’s monthly roundup.

OCD Love Story is available now. Review copy received from the publisher or picked up at BEA or something.