“People say depression lies. Anxiety is just stupid. It’s unable to tell the difference between things that are actually scary (being buried alive, for example) and things that are not scary at all (being in bed under the covers). It hits all the same buttons. Stop. Go. Up. Down. It’s all the same to anxiety.”

–Maureen Johnson, from Truly Devious

I was supposed to have a review up today for the third book in the Truly Devious series, The Hand on the Wall, but it’s not going to happen. I’d planned to work on it yesterday afternoon, only then I got a piece of news that caused my anxiety to skyrocket. I can’t talk about the news publicly, but I’ll say that it’s not bad – it’s just something that involves waiting and unknowns, and my biggest anxiety trigger is uncertainty. So instead of sitting at my computer yesterday, I spent the afternoon and evening with anxiety movement like hand-clenching and uncontrollable gestures, trying to stave off a full-blown panic attack, unable to do basic things like “eat dinner.” I’m feeling better this morning, but a review is not in the cards for a few days, so I leave you with the above description of anxiety. Johnson does an amazing job describing anxiety and panic disorder in this series, and I’m grateful to see this kind of faithful representation in a book.