For October, I read All Our Broken Pieces by L.D. Crichton. This book is a young adult fiction about two teenagers in high school living in Bel Air. They are no ordinary students – Lennon has OCD and Kyler got severely burned on the face during a house fire. When they are forced to complete their language arts project together, they become closer and closer and begin to fall in love with each other.

I found much pleasure in reading this book because all of the characters seemed like they were real people. One of the main characters, Lennon, helped me develop a deeper understanding of the struggle that people have who suffer with mental illnesses like OCD. The vivid details that L.D Crichton describes to show how Lennon copes with and faces her illness is really captivating. I never knew that such little things, like tapping your fingers against the wall or making sure everything is organized correctly could affect a person so much.

In this book, my favorite character was Kyler because he is understanding. According to the text, when Lennon asks if Kyler thinks she is weird for having OCD, he responds with ‘“So what, you have a thing. Doesn’t everybody?”’ (page 23) This evidence proves that he is understanding of Lennon because he was able to see past her flaws and to the beautiful, thoughtful girl she really is inside.

My favorite quote from the book is “Ordinary can never achieve greatness.” (page 218) This quote is meaningful to me because in life, everyone is trying to be the same as others around them because they are afraid of what other people may think of them if they are different. This world would be very boring if everyone didn’t have their strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. This book encourages people to draw their own path and paint a unique future that is their own.