OCD, The Dude and Me by Lauren Vaughn

Danielle is obsessive compulsive, probably adhd and an outcast, at least in her view.  She is in counseling, yoga for relaxation, social skills therapy and is a senior in high school.  Early on the reader knows something precipitated all this but until Danielle is ready to share we do not know exactly what or how traumatic it was.  She describes all her compulsions and her obsession with hats. One such is her crush on a guy, Jacob, who treats her rather badly. She actually spends a lot of time doing this in the story.  Here is the cast of characters that see her through what looks like a terrible senior year but turns out perhaps not to be so much so.  Aunt Joyce is incredible in her wisdom and ability to see the better side of things.  She makes costumes for Lebowski Fest.  She tells Danielle she will be just fine on the Senior trip to England and insists that Danielle go, for instance.  Marv, the school counselor who is willing to let Danielle to do therapy through notes back and forth.  He is fairly wise in this.  Justine, a very elderly tour guide that Danielle meets on her Senior class trip. Ms.  Harrison, English teacher who assigns many essays and gives wise criticism.  Many of the essays, which are part of the story, have references to Shakespeare plays but not done in a way that requires one to have read and understood them.  Daniel, the boy she meets and become friends with from socials skills.  The story is told in letters to Aunt Joyce, Justine and missives to Marv.  It is told in her essays for Ms. Harrison and her journal writings.  That makes this an episodic plot with focus on problems not characters so this isn't my favorite kind of book.  But it reads quickly and Danielle comes to appreciate herself and move forward from the trauma that so affected her.  Teens who enjoy realistic fiction dealing with serious problems would undoubtedly enjoy it.
JDW1/14

Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison

Lo has a serious obsessive/compulsive disorder which makes her an outsider, mostly at school and very often embarrassed and even immobilized by her rituals. They come in multiples of 3 with 27 being perfect. They include, tapping, repeating words and collecting "junk" in sets and rearranging them looking for the exact right order. Her compulsions apparently went into overdrive when the family lost her older brother. Lo is in AP classes and one boy is interested in her though she can't understand why. One of the popular girls also shows interest but possibly for Lo's smarts rather than Lo the person.
One way Lo spends her time is riding the bus, taking different stops each time, always some multiple of three. So it is that she stops at Neverland, a very run down area with strip joints and homeless "cities". She is considering where to look for more stuff to collect when shots ring out. She runs in terror and gets lost. A girl carrying onions to her mother's restaurant gets her back to the bus station. The following morning, Lo discovers that a girl, Sapphire, was gunned down just where she was standing. The news carried a description of several of her objects known to be missing and of her love of blue lipstick. The next time Lo goes out shopping for her collection its to a flea market where she discovers the objects described in the news, including a necklace that she buys and puts on and a metal butterfly. Lo is compelled to find out what happened to Sapphire, returning again and again to Neverland. She meets a boy known as Flynt there apparently a throw away kid who she cannot quite trust. She meets exotic dancers who sort of knew Sapphire and considers taking a job as a dancer in the same place as Sapphire. She meets a scary man who she runs from. And, she starts getting weird warnings, a dead cat on her door step, signs on her locker for instance. Yet, she cannot stop herself from searching for what happened to Sapphire. There are other murders. Lo tries to tell the cops what she suspects but they say Sapphire's case is closed. One cop believes differently. In the end Lo is nearly killed, learns about true love and about her brother who is gone. The obsessive stuff gets tiring to me but maybe thats the point. The mystery, well I suspected correctly where it was going but that doesn't mean everyone will and it is quite complex. Lo and Flynt are fairly complex characters but no others are. This is an ok story. JDW