Addition
by Toni Jordan

List Price: $13.99
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780061582585
Publisher: HarperOne

Grace Lisa Vandenburg: she's just like the girl next door, the best friend you hope to find, except for one thing --- Grace counts. The letters in her name (19); the steps she takes every morning to the local café (920); the daily slice of orange cake and the number of poppy seeds on top dictate the number of bites she'll take to finish it. Numbers hold Grace's world together but that world threatens to come apart when she finds Seamus Joseph O'Reilly (also a 19) sitting at the table where she always sits, and of top of that the café is out of orange cake. When Grace accepts Seamus's invitation to join him and then orders pancakes, it's the beginning of something either dreadful…or wonderful, and it's up to Grace to figure it out.

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1. How would you describe the character of our protagonist, Grace Lisa Vandenburg? Did your impressions of Grace change throughout the course of the novel?

2. Grace can be considered an unreliable narrator, though perhaps not willfully so. How do Grace's views on Jill, her mother and Seamus differ from the views you formed as an objective reader?

3. What parallels and differences did you discover between Grace's life and the life of her idol, Nikola Tesla?

4. Do you think the novel is successful in presenting the perspective of someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Has it changed your perception of the condition?

5. How is humor used in the novel?

6. How and why does the tone of the novel change when Grace is undergoing “treatment”?

7. On one level, Addition is a romantic comedy. How does it deviate from the typical romantic comedy?

8. Did the novel end the way you expected? Why or why not?

9. Is there a difference between eccentricity and insanity? Why or why not?

10. Addition is a celebration of small things. What does this mean? What small things might you celebrate in your own life?

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