Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is another book that I thought would be great. A girl with OCD meets a boy with schizophrenic in a pysch ward and they plan to escape.
I couldn't fully get invested in the fact that the two main characters had a mental illness. The OCD and schizophrenia seemed also forced. It was if the author was trying to hard to make us readers to believe that these characters had OCD and schizophrenia. The hospital setting was a bit far fetch as well, which took away from the reality of the story and made it more of a farce.
I'm ashamed to admit, that I couldn't finish the book

Waiting for Fitz, nicely put, was a terrible book. I couldn't finish this novel because I hated the main characters and the plot was completely unrealistic. This book must have had no research put into it at all because the two main characters did not act like any real person with OCD or schizophrenia. The way that the hospital they stayed in was described did not remind me at all of any mental health wing-- there wouldn't be anything in a real hospital that was in this book. Also, I felt no sympathy for Fitz-- even though he's supposed to be pitied for his mental illness, which is a problem in itself-- because he was annoying and unbelievable as someone with schizophrenia. The protagonist with OCD was not a main character I could relate to at all-- she was portrayed as "crazy," which is extremely offensive.

Waiting for Fitz didn't just have problems with its cast and storyline; the writing style was also pretty bad. In order to write a novel about mental health, research needs to be put into those who are affected-- something that Waiting for Fitz had none of.

This book ended up being a DNF for me. I read 25% of the book, and I just couldn't make myself read anymore. I can believe that Addie is a realistic character, but I can't handle spending any more time with her. Part of it is I don't really jive with her sense of humor. Also, the number of times she, in only the first quarter of the book, talks about putting on a mask or acting to hide her true self is both annoying and unnecessary. I also wasn't really feeling a vibe between Addie and Fitz. Maybe it will appeal to younger readers, but it just wasn't working for me.

I am always happy to see books on mental health for teens, but I don't really feel as though it was handled very realistically in the novel. It was a bit of a struggle to get through.

When I first read the description for this book, I was excited. I really enjoy books about characters working through their problems and finding each other in the process, especially when the problems are as heavy as OCD or Schizophrenia. Reading Spencer Hyde's Authors Notes at the beginning of the ARC was interesting and educational. I really wish I enjoyed what I did read of this book just as much.
Characters are the most important thing to me when I'm reading. Feeling connected to the characters is a big part of preferences as a reader. It excites me and makes me want to keep reading and makes me really care about the story. Addie and Fitz just didn't reach me and I'm not totally sure why. I think a big part of it was that I wasn't completely sure how believable they are as characters suffering with mental illnesses. I understood their wit and humour and their determination to make everything a joke (and sometimes that was funny) but I couldn't connect to either of them, especially not Addie. I found it difficult to care about them when they didn't seem to care about themselves. I didn't feel like their relationship was natural or realistic in how they met and connected. I know they're teenagers behind their illness, but it just felt like there wasn't anything more than a shared love of puns to connect them to start of with.
While I applauded some of Spencer's ideas and beautiful descriptive writing, and his inclusion of Didi's tourettes, the story got lost for me in Addie's too many "whatevers" and I felt confused as I was reading because the story seemed to jump around or skip over parts I thought should've been important for setting up the story and characters in a clean and readable way. I really wanted to be invested in what Addie was going through and eventually in what would develop between her and Fitz, but I found myself lost on to many occasions and unable to find what I was looking for in the story and in the characters.
I think this novel does have a lot of promise, it's got a strong theme and idea behind it and books about mental illnesses like OCD and Schizophrenia are so important, but I simply wasn't able to read more than half of it and I really wish I'd been able to.

Waiting for Fitz was O.K. but then it got to the point where I just didn't care about the characters anymore. They just meandered through the latter half of the novel and there wasn't much of a point to the plot.

It is just so hard to get into the book....a disappointment. Description looked promising but the book no.

Hello everybody!
Today's post is going to be a review for Waiting for Fitz by Spencer Hyde, a book that's set to be released in March of 2019. I would like to thank NetGalley as well as Shadow Mountain Publishing for allowing me to have an e-arc of this book in exchange for a honest review.
This story is about a girl named Addie who is struggling with her OCD and it reaches a point where she is sent to an adolescent psychiatric ward at Seattle Regional Hospital where she meets Fitz, a boy haunted by his past and also has schizophrenia. They immediately gain a connection to one another and wish they both could make sense of their lives.
What I really enjoyed about this book is how (at least in my case) you could really feel for Addie as she's adjusting to the psychiatric ward and as she's getting to know all the other patients (for the most part, I believe they're all Addie's age or very close, an exception being for a girl named Leah who is twelve). I enjoyed seeing Addie's conversations with the other patients (especially Leah, considering she was the youngest one there and yet Addie wanted to be sure she was doing okay).
The humor these characters have to distract themselves from their issues was funny and relatable at many times throughout the story, but I really wish their growth by getting the help they need would've been showcased because by the end of the book, I hadn't really felt like I saw how Addie progressed in terms of her OCD.
For me personally, this book focused much more on the growth in Addie and Fitz's relationship rather than mental health (and I understand that on Goodreads this story is categorized as a romance) and while I enjoyed reading about them growing close to each other, I wish the representation for mental health and other issues the characters dealt with (such as how one character has Tourette's) would've been handled better.
All and all, I would recommend this if you're more into romance but not necessarily if you're looking for a book that shows progression on bettering one's well being (whether that be for their mental health or like in one character's case, Tourette's).

What a disappointment. We NEED more books about mental health, but we need well written and accurately portrayed books. This was a chore and a disservice.

Thank you net galley for an advance reader copy of this novel.

I was very excited to read this book about mental health and OCD. While I appreciated the author sharing this story, I found I couldn't get into the story. The characters had lots of dialogue and I wasn't invested in reading every word; but that was just my reader preference. I did appreciate the realistic ending and would ty something else by this author.

The Quick Cut: A girl and guy who meet in a psych ward plot to escape the hospital together.

A Real Review:
Thank you to Shadow Mountain Publishing for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Whenever I read books that involve psychological issues, I hold the quality of what is being written to a higher standard. This is primarily because discussing such sensitive topics should be handled with yhe closest of care and concern. So when I saw this one become available involving OCD, I got very excited to see it get it's due portrayal wise.

I'm still left waiting by the way. Let me say this plainly: this book is offensive. Not only is the lead character Addie rude, but she's belligerent and mean. Within the first ten pages I found myself openly rooting against her (which I am fairly certain wasn't the author's intention). When the romantic interest Fitz is introduced and acts in similar ways, it didn't take long for my opinion of him to go the same direction.

Beyond the characters and their questionable qualities, I found that the writing related to their conditions really didn't meet my expectations. Fitz and his schizophrenia really could've gotten a better write, but I've also read some phenomenal portrayals of this (hello "Words on Bathroom Walls").

At the end of the day, don't waste your time or effort. There should have been so much more attention to the details here considering the delicate content.

This book is intriguing. I really like the subject matter, but like many other reviewers, I am having a hard time getting into it. I am curious if this is really how life is for those in the hospitals with disorders. It seems as if a lot of "head games" are being played and not much true help is being given.

I was not a fan of this book. I was interested because my sister suffers with OCD so i thought it would be interesting reading about a character with it but i ended up stopping mid way.. I tried stopping and picing it back up again but i could not really connect with the characters

I was so excited by this book! We need more books about mental health, to help bring awareness and also to normalise it. In this book we have a girl with severe OCD who finds and teams up with a boy suffering from schizophrenia.
The summary looked good, but the book failed to engage me. I mean, the OCd at the beginning is described as very severe, and the girl wants to heal, but then she is just obnoxious. The same can be said about the rest of the characters: want to heal but don't seem to take therapy seriously. And yes, I get deffective joking, but still.
Also, there was way too much dialogue, a lot of talking that seemed superfluos and that wanted to convey a lot but fell short. Sometimes I thought it would have been better to let the characters show instead of tell.
And the characters... they were similarly constructed, most of them seemed created around the illnesses, instead of being individuals with an illness, if you understand what I mean.
I just stopped reading.

Thank you to Net Galley for this ARC of Waiting for Fitz in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Did not finish at 29%. Couldn’t finish. I so wanted to like this book. As a person who struggles with treated mental illness and, in particular, OCD, I was so excited to see my illness represented in a book. I also use YA in my comp classes a lot and thought this was great! A book we could use to discuss mental illness and identity.

Unfortunately, this was not the book for me and it’s just not well written. I felt like I was in a fiction writing workshop while reading this and literally wanted to yell “show not tell!” at my Kindle. There was so much summary and almost no scene. There was so much trite, sentimental stuff being said by this seemingly bright protagonist who is portrayed as so cynical. Then, after a wildly cliched thought, the author throws a random whatever in there. Seriously: the word whatever has been used at least once a page. The voice isn’t authentic, the writing is stilted, it’s just not enjoyable at all. Life’s too short for bad books.

Waking For Fitz is a book about struggles with mental health in teenagers.

Addie has severe OCD, ticks, eye blinking, rituals that take up lots of time, and finger tapping, etc.
Fitz is diagnosed as schizophrenic although he talks back to the voices he hears in his head and at one point I believe becomes one of the other personalities.

The clinic is Odd and not a realistic portrayal of a psych ward that has kids young as 10 years old in it, along with older teenagers.

Fitz wants to escape from the clinic and convinces Addie and some of the other patients to help him. They all help form a plan and Addie even goes along with him. The escape doesn’t go very well.

When Addie returns she is in outpatient treatment, going to school whilst living with her mom. All the while she waits for Fitz.

Thanks to NetGalley and Spencer Hyde for the pre publication read!

Thank you to Shadow Mountain Publishing for the arc of this book.
I really wanted to like this book, from the description it seemed right up my alley.
But I found it to be just an ok read, nothing exciting or thrilling just ok.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of WAITING FOR FITZ by Spencer Hyde in exchange for my honest review.***

Addie, who has severe OCD, meets Fitz, a schizophrenic, on the psych ward of a hospital. After bonding, they plan to escape.

I’m a psychologist and I interned in a psych hospital, so I was excited to receive the ARC of WAITING FOR FITZ. Debut author Spencer Hyde’s above average world building was the best part of the story. In the preface, Hyde is said to have spent three of his teen years at Johns Hopkins for severe OCD, so I assumed he was either born in the 1950s or 1960s, before deinstitutionalization or extremely wealthy. Insurance barely pays for a week to stabilize patients before kicking them to outpatient or a day program. Maybe the preface meant three weeks.

Hyde got so much of the hospitalization details wrong, I became frustrated. I don’t mind a little creative license, but the hospital was unrecognizable to any reality.

-Fitz had been in the hospital ward two years. If he was that impaired he would have been in a state hospital, not a ward in a general hospital.
-a 12 yo girl would never be on a ward with 17 yo boys due to legal statutes.
-staff would never encourage romance between patients.
-private rooms, a ward with only 5 patients, coed wards (these are little things, but they add up to an unrealistic setting)

Addie’s OCD symptoms seemed plot driven, and not part of her character because they turned on and off in an unrealistic manner. OCD is an anxiety disorder, which was never mentioned. Fitz’s schizophrenia wasn’t well depicted. His thought processes were much too organized for the severity of the voices he heard and spoke to. He also didn’t show any of the ticks or visible side effects of the meds. Another patient who was a pathological liar was egged on by one of the aides.

I tried to give concrete examples and not pile on every inaccuracy. I’m picky because literature may be teen reader’s introduction to mental illness. They will assume accuracy, even in fiction books.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend WAITING FOR FITZ.