Side Effects

Are you tired of books with sick kids dying bravely, teaching everyone a lesson? Then this book is for you! Not only does Izzy, 15, NOT die from lymphoma, but she doesn't always have a positive attitude about it. Learn from Izzy what it's really like to get diagnosed, be whisked off to the hospital to be poked and prodded and have surgery, then go through chemo with side effects like hair loss and nausea. She stops caring about school, gets annoyed that everyone who loves is either overhelping or doesn't know what to say, and finally learns how to go on when she realizes that cancer isn't necessarily a death sentence, and after the pain and needles and drugs, life goes on.

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 show more 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. show less

14-year-old Izzy's life is turned upside down and inside out when she finds out she has cancer, and everyone she knows starts treating her differently--except Kay, her best friend.

Side Effects is gripping, devastating, and satisfying, but not uplifting--and that's the whole point. This is not a story of triumph over adversity, and it's not a tragedy with a voiceless victim. It's a story of what happens when life hits, whether you come to terms with it or not. Izzy is a strong, fully dimensional character with an acid tongue, and Koss plunges the reader into Izzy's personal hell with no more apology than Izzy gets when a nurse sticks a needle in for the 5th time, trying to find a vein. Koss's writing takes you from lauging out loud to show more holding your breath to crying and back to laughing again in a matter of a few paragraphs. There is so much packed in, you won't believe it's only 143 pages when you finish it. Highly recommended for all middle and high school libraries, public library young adult sections. show less

Teenager Isabella Miller is diagnosed with cancer.

Funny, sarcastic, and painful. It's not too graphic, but you still get the gist of what she's going through, from the frustration at the begining when everyone talks around her and forgets to talk to her, to the horrible side effects of the chemo, to having to deal with everyone else's coping methods along with figuring out her own.

It's a quick read but it's very moving and the voice rings true.

Reviewed by Jennifer Rummel for TeensReadToo.com

Izzy wakes up one morning concerned because her glands are still swollen from a recent sickness--and she soon discovers that she has cancer. She's placed into a children's hospital where people come talk to her until she no longer hears what they're talking about. All she can do is concentrate on drawing.

Her mother is a basket case and Izzy is in shock.

Now her life has drastically changed. People who were her friends no longer talk to her and people she's never talked to are fake around her. She doesn't quite know how to react, but it's not with the anger her best friend feels.

Izzy goes though treatments: the pain, the puking, and the needles, but still never loses her sense of humor.

SIDE show more EFFECTS takes a deep look into the medical and emotional roller-coaster of cancer patients. With Izzy, you hear the knowledge first-hand, which makes you both laugh and cry. show less

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.

Young adult fiction, my ultimate literary weakness. Well, I don't know about that. One of my major literary weaknesses. Anyway. It's about cancer. But it's funny! Not like Cancer Vixen funny but like actually really good funny. This is the first book I've ever read that treats cancer patients as humans. Rather than rave more about it, I'm going to give you an excerpt. For the background, Isabelle is the cancer patient and Carrie is her roommate at the hospital. Isabelle, aka Izzy, is talking on the phone with her best friend Kay, whose parents will not let her visit Izzy in the hospital. Izzy's parents have brought her a package of letters from school.