ARC Review: Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy

Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy
Release Date: March 18th 2014
Publisher: HarperCollins
Source: Edelweiss
Buy: Amazon | Book Depository

Goodreads Summary

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?

First thoughts after I finished this book? Finally! This book was dragging for so long I was losing my patience with it.

Alice and Harvey have been friends since they were children but going to high school they drifted apart with different social statuses, not really talking to each other until Alice is diagnosed with leukaemia. For a year and a half, Harvey has been there by her side during the good and the bad days falling more and more in love with her as her life clock begins to run out. But Alice goes into remission; becoming the miracle patient who will live. Now that she gets to live her, relationship with Harvey ends.

See this annoys me! The fact that she could only love Harvey while she was dying and knew she wouldn’t be with him forever. How stupid is that? I get the fact that she might be scared of commitment but that doesn’t mean you have to break his poor heart after he finds out the love of his life, the only girl he has ever loved will live but doesn’t want to be with him. Ugh. Not only this but Alice is a complete bitch to everyone but yet she gets this amazing guy to fall for her, and she does get what’s coming to her. 

“I knew how to die. It was the living that scared me.”

I loved how the book was arranged. The “Now” and “Then”. Alice was completely different while she was going through chemo and was dying. Later on she turned into a shallow girl who decided she was too good for Harvey and didn’t want him anymore which I guess was how she was before her diagnosis. I guess it was good to see both sides of her but I was hoping this book was going to be about how she realises she gets a second chance at life and decides to change her life around and become a better person.

“That girl in the case was dead. And that girl in the case was me”

I think I liked Alice about 10 percent of the book and that was at the very start and while she was taking her revenge on her ex-boyfriend Luke and the girl he was cheating with. Harvey is a sweet naïve guy and I couldn’t decide whether or not I liked him. At times he was the sweetest guy that was caring for a girl that was slowly dying and at other times he was a total fool for letting her walk all over him!

This book wasn’t anything I expected. I was hoping this would make me cry, or laugh or even feel something but there was nothing. This book was below ordinary. It was annoying. Even the very end annoyed me. I hate cliff hangers!

All quotes have been taken from an uncorrected proof and may be subject to change