Honestly, I liked this book so much, I would have enjoyed about 50 more pages. ( )

Being diagnosed with cancer is so unfair! Read this book to find out how cancer could affect your life if you are diagnosed as a teen. ( )

A wonderful realistic story of 15-year-old Izzy who is diagnosed with lymphoma. She's wonderfully sardonic as she deals with her family, especially mom, and her friends reactions to her illness. Despite the gritty reality of the treatments and hair loss the humor keeps you reading and hopeful. ( )

Even though she’s feeling great, her swollen glands force twelve year old Isabelle to visit her doctor who immediately sends to her Children’s Hospital for CAT scans and biopsies. It turns out that she’s got lymphoma, requiring a hospital stay and eight rounds of chemotherapy. Her hospital stay will be short, just for her first round of chemo, and then she’ll get them on an outpatient basis. Her hospital roommate is Carrie, who has sickle cell and comes to the hospital only when it flares up. Carrie shows Isabelle the hospital ropes and introduces her to some of the kids who are there for sickle cell, leukemia, lymphoma and other diseases.

Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss, author of The Girls and Poison Ivy, takes readers through the last six months of Isabelle’s eighth grade year, detailing the chemo regimen and the side effects (nausea, hair loss, etc.). Readers live her life, reacting to her treatments, understanding her desire to sleep and skip school and be a lazy slug. More telling are the ways Isabelle and her family, friends and classmates react. Izzy tries to be her normal self, being as strong as she can be, cracking jokes. Her mother cries 24/7. He father quotes remission statistics success rates. Her Aunt Lucy is the only logical one, trying to treat Izzy the same as always. Her friend Kay is always by her side. However, some of her classmates are less understanding, creating a vulgar video mocking people with cancer. Koss even describes the various doctors, nurses and social workers, some honest, some treating patients like babies, some indifferent.

Koss’s writing is direct. She doesn’t white wash anything, yet she isn’t negative or depressing. Side Effects, despite the subject, is hopeful. Regardless of whether or not you know anyone with cancer, you can relate to Izzy. You love her for herself. You sympathize with the agony that her parents are enduring. You admire Kay. It can’t be easy watching Izzy’s hair fall out, yet Kay stands by her friend. You might think it odd that there’s a love interest in such a book, but it is there and adds to the hopeful attitude.

I liked Koss’ writing from having read The Girls. I like it as much now for having tackled such a difficult subject so effectively, for having produced a novel that teens with cancer or without it can read, understand, relate to and enjoy. Yes….even enjoy. ( )

a good book ( )