The book Side Effects is about an eighth grade girl named Isabelle or Izzy as everyone else calls her. Izzy is sarcastic when she doesn’t want to hear or face the truth. Izzy shows a lot of sacrasism the most when she finds out that she has Lymphoma. She tries to make jokes about it probably to help her feel better. Throughout the whole entire book Izzy usually has some type of smart remark when she’s in the hospital or at home sick. Izzy is also extremely stubborn. When Izzy first found out that she had Lymphoma she needed to have some way of getting the medication and chemo through her body. She refused to get a PICC line which would be like a port for the chemo to go through. Instead, she said no to putting the PICC line in. She just wanted them to take blood through a vein in her arm and put the chemo through her vein. In the end, Izzy’s veins in her arm were about shot because of the number of times they had to poke her arm to get blood. Since Izzy was scared and refused to get a PICC line, her punishment was her veins getting shot.
I pictured Izzy as a girl who doesn’t really care about her appearance. Most girls who are in 8th grade just like Izzy would probably have to disagree about that statement because they care about what they look like. Izzy seems like the type of girl who would wake up in the morning, throw on some type of outfit that looks like it works, and call it good for the day. Izzy is also not into drama, unlike her best friend Kate. When Izzy was home sick or in the hospital getting chemo, Kate would always come by to visit with her and tell her all about the drama Izzy was missing out on. She is also pretty outgoing too. Most people are shy and don’t like going out in public when they have the side effect of hair loss from the chemo. Whenever Izzy felt like getting up and doing something, she did. She even worked up the courage to talk to the guy she really liked when she was out with her friend Kate one time. All in all, Izzy is a pretty laid back girl.
Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss are a pretty good book. The author did a really good job explaining how cancer can affect teenagers- not just for the older people. Amy Goldman Koss also make a thorough job of telling how the whole process works without giving you a research paper explanation. This book was also funny too because she made the main character Izzy, a sarcastic 8th grader who doesn’t really take all of this really seriously. She makes Izzy come up with a joke to make the whole cancer thing not seem as sad. This book is also pretty easy to relate to if you have or had cancer or if you know someone with it or who had it too. It also gives people hope that the character Izzy will survive and be able to continue with her life after the cancer goes away. I would recommend this book to anyone especially people who are teenagers because I think they can relate to how things happen in those years of life. I’m not sure if a guy would want to read this book because it didn’t really seem like a type of book a guy would like or want to read. This book also doesn’t have very many pages that are what made me want to read this book. This book has larger print and it is only about 143 pages. You can finish it very easily and quickly.
