Things I Shouldn't Think

by Janet Ruth Young

Everyone has weird thoughts sometimes. But for seventeen-year-old Dani Solomon, strange thoughts have taken over her life. She loves Alex, the little boy she babysits, more than anything. But one day, she has a vision of murdering him that's so gruesome, she can't get it out of her mind. In fact, Dani's convinced that she really will kill Alex. She confesses the thoughts to keep him safe, setting off a media frenzy that makes "Dani Death" the target of an extremist vigilante group.

Through the help of a brave therapist, Dani begins to heal her broken mind. But will it be too late? The people of her community want justice . . . and Dani's learning that some thoughts are better left unsaid.

• ISBN10: 1442451076
• ISBN13: 9781442451070
• Publish Date: 1 December 2012 (first published 26 July 2011)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Edition: Reprint ed.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Joséphine]

I could not put this book down. I had to know what would happen next. I wanted to know how Dani would come to deal with her thoughts, if she would be able to overcome them, and how. The chapters were markedly short, so it was easy to fly past the pages.

Aside from just writing from the third-person perspective, J.R. Young also included newspaper articles, opinion pieces, editorials, TV transcripts, blog posts and comments, social networking profiles and conversations from chat rooms. I think this approach is a good reflection of the world today. People’s opinions are shaped and influenced by the media and other popular opinion. Fear-mongering is a common tactic employed on the Internet and J.R. Young thus dealt with the dangers of misinformation.

I think the premise of the book alone is good reason alone to read it. Beyond this however, I think that some areas could have been better explored. As much as Dani’s OCD was presented in terms of the symptoms and ways to deal with it, other aspects of the plot were grossly neglected. Shelley, Dani’s best friend, came out to her. Then there was Malcolm. He became an important figure in the story, yet his deal is nowhere explained properly. Surely Shelley’s and Malcom’s backgrounds could have been explored a little more. In the end I thought it was a little myopic to focus so much on Dani at the expense of these other two characters with rather significant issues. I’m sure that would have been possible without necessarily undermining the main issue of Dani’s OCD.

Fuller review here.