Side Effects May Vary Book Review

Side Effects May Vary
Julie Murphy

Hardcover, 330 pages

Published March 18th 2014 by Balzer + Bray

Recommendation Level:

3. Would only recommend this if you are into this genre/type of book.

 

What if you’d been living your life as if you were dying—only to find out that you had your whole future ahead of you?

When sixteen-year-old Alice is diagnosed with leukemia, her prognosis is grim. To maximize the time she does have, she vows to spend her final months righting wrongs—however she sees fit. She convinces her friend Harvey, whom she knows has always had feelings for her, to help her with a crazy bucket list that’s as much about revenge (humiliating her ex-boyfriend and getting back at her arch nemesis) as it is about hope (doing something unexpectedly kind for a stranger and reliving some childhood memories). But just when Alice’s scores are settled, she goes into remission.

Now Alice is forced to face the consequences of all that she’s said and done, as well as her true feelings for Harvey. But has she done irreparable damage to the people around her, and to the one person who matters most?

 

 

 Review:

An entire day since I finished this and I am still figuring out whether I liked it or not.

The Plot:
The book is split up into Alice and Harvey's points of view. And is also split up into then, and now.
Alice finds out she has cancer, and (according to the synopsis) creates a bucket list. And starts to right a bunch of wrongs. Yet I felt as if very little of this book focused on the bucket list. The other thing is this book takes a while to pick up speed. It was a bit boring for the first 1/2 of the book or so.
After the first 1/2, I found myself liking this book more. I think that I started to understand the characters better.

The Characters:

The big thing I noticed while reading reviews for this one, is that people didn't like it because of Alice. Alice is not a nice character. She is mean in parts of this book. She uses Harvey. Yet in some way I still liked reading her point of view. I even liked it better than reading Harvey's. When you are reading about a character being mean/snobbish who has everything in the world, and has a seemingly "perfect" life....It is one thing. But reading Alice's point of view. And seeing her go through finding out she has cancer, bullying, and a ton of other things that I won't mention in fear of spoiling the plot. Alice is much more realistic. She doesn't take everything in stride. She is frustrated.
So I didn't enjoy the things Alice did. But I did enjoy how realistic she seemed.

Harvey is just Harvey. He is completely infatuated in Alice. And Alice does take advantage of that (and Harvey knows it. I wasn't a huge fan of his character. He wasn't amazing, and wasn't terrible.

Overall I think that the author did a great job with realistically portraying Alice. But since I wasn't as big of a fan of the way the plot was set up, and I wasn't a huge fan of Harvey....I would only recommend this if you are into Realistic Contemporary Fiction.

Have you read Side Effects May Vary? What did you think?