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Laddar... Side Effects May Varyav Julie Murphy
Top Five Books of 2014 (267) Nov. 2015 new books (31) Laddar...
Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. Alice is resigned to her fate - she is dying of leukemia at 16 years old. However, before the inevitable happens, there are things she wishes to accomplish, including acts of revenge, so with the help of Harvey, the boy who has always loved her, she acts. Then she goes into remission. This is where it gets really interesting - how do you now live with all that you have done before thinking you would not have to deal with the results of all that you did? I love this author's work. “Then he left, and with him he took the sun, the moon, the stars, and anything inside of me that might have been good.” I keep picking up books with awful characters! (Don't misunderstand...great book, frustrating characters.) Alice is a bitch. There is no other way to say it, and to call her anything less would be an insult to her character. She knows she's a bitch, and yet she continues on a path of self-destruction. Then she compounds the problem by dragging decent, loyal, genuinely good people down with her. I understand that Alice got cancer as a teenager, but that doesn't give her a free pass to treat people the way she did. She thought she would die and not have to deal with any of the aftermath, but she was wrong. I don't know why Alice found out she was going to die and then immediately thought REVENGE. I'm not in her situation, nor have I have ever been, but I would like to think I would be the type of person to make amends and find resolutions. I doubt I would have the energy to seek out perceived enemies and destroy them. We're also in drastically different stages in life, so I'm sure my final moments would be spent with my children. Alice had a lot to deal with, and she was so young and afraid. She just didn't want to admit to being afraid. She allowed her feelings to swallow her up from the inside, and would never say what needed to be said. She was selfish, cruel, and unrelenting in her pursuit of payback. There are actual enemies, sure, but what teenager (or adult for that matter) doesn't have an enemy or two. I wish she had focused more of her time on the people around her, and expressed her feelings instead of burying them. It all bubbled out at the same time, which never ends well. Harvey. Sweet, innocent, blind Harvey. I don't know where his self-respect went, but I wish he had found it a lot sooner than he did. His love of Alice was almost like an obsession. He just knew from a very young age that he loved her and would always love her. How is that healthy? Harvey knew more about Alice than he knew about himself. You have to determine who you are by yourself before you can be you with someone else. Especially when that someone is as toxic and all-consuming as Alice. Alice made me crazy. I lost so much oxygen just from sighing heavily throughout the book. If I had kept rolling my eyes, they would have been permanently affixed to the tops of my eyelids. Harvey needed to put himself first, but was always too concerned with Alice. Then it starts to get interesting. They are two broken, helpless people that grow and find themselves as the story progresses. They don't remain obnoxious, unlikeable characters forever. They change and evolve. It was beautiful to watch, even when it hurt. Alice's pain wasn't just from her cancer. It was from betrayal, and a loss of trust. Harvey never wavered in his affections, but he did stop taking shit from Alice. Side Effects May Vary was a tragically hopeful story, and I'm happy with how it concluded. Originally posted at Do You Dog-ear? on Thursday, November 9, 2017. http://www.doyoudog-ear.com/2017/11/side-effects-may-vary-by-julie-murphy.html inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
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"Alice is ready to go out in a blaze of glory, but then she discovers she's in remission from cancer and she must deal with all of the mistakes she's made and the people she's hurt"-- Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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Alice was one of my favourite YA characters of recent novels. I found that, though she had fulfilled her bucket list, she had actually spent a lot of time keeping up a pretence for her family and certain people close to her. As such, when she learns that she's gone into remission, she has to reclaim her own life, and doing this isn't exactly pleasing to everyone.
The bucket list wasn't really as much of a topic as I thought it was going to be--it was more of an afterthought. The things she did do were relatively unoriginal and felt more like a high school revenge game than the final wishes of someone dying of cancer.
I loved the emphasis on music and dance. The contrast between an art form, a passion, and a career was palpable and as a former ballet dancer myself I really related to Alice's feelings in quitting.
The format of this book was unusual, with chapters told from both Harvey's and Alice's perspectives before and after. I found this to be more confusing than effective as it sometimes became hard to remember where I was and what was happening, but I did enjoy getting both the before and after contrast.
This was a solid book worth checking out for Alice's character, but it didn't stand out much to me.
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