For fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell comes this powerful novel about a girl with cancer who creates a take-no-prisoners bucket list that sets off a war at school—only to discover she's gone into remission.

When sixteen-year-old Alice is diagnosed with leukemia, she vows to spend her final months righting wrongs. So she convinces her best friend, Harvey, to help her with a crazy bucket list that's as much about revenge as it is about hope. But just when Alice's scores are settled, she goes into remission, and now she must face the consequences of all she's said and done. Contemporary realistic-fiction readers who love romantic stories featuring strong heroines will find much to savor in this standout debut.

This book provided an interesting variation on the terminal illness trend that's been taking over YA literature recently.

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.

I haven't written a review in 2months!!!! WTF is wrong with me?!?

At A Glance

Genre: Young Adult; Contemporary
Love Triangle/Insta Love?: No
Cliff Hanger: No
Rating: 3 Stars

Score Sheet
All out of ten

Cover: 8
Plot: 8
Characters: 4
World Building: 5
Flow: 5
Series Congruity: n/a
Writing: 6
Ending: 7

Total: 7

In Depth

Best Part: Carrie references!
Worst Part: Horrible MC.
Overall Feels Felt: What a B!; Get over yourself!!

Conclusion

Continuing the Series: n/a
Recommending: eh.
Misc.:

Short Review: Ugh. I don't know where I am on this book. I loved Harvey and his POV, but i HATEDDDDD Alice. She was the biggest b around and i just couldn't handle her at all. We get it, you're dying and it sucks but that doesn't give you any right to just act like that missy. Ugh. dislike Alice!

Review In GIF Form

    I'm a little conflicted about how I feel after reading this book. I really liked the plot. This kind of jaded teenage girl, finding out she has cancer and is going to die, which in turn leads her to choose to live the rest of her days doing the things she wants to do and throwing caution and consequence to the wind. The real kicker comes after she uses this time more for revenge purposes than anything else, and after engaging in all these dirty deeds finds out that she really isn't going to die. So now she must face the things she has done and the very real consequences that come with them.

   Sounds awesome huh?! I thought so too, unfortunately the characters leading this parade, Alice and Harvey (the boy who she drags through the trenches with her mercilessly) fell a little short for me. Alice can be a very hard person to sympathize with most of the time. You'd think it would be quite easy considering her tragic circumstances, but she ends up making it harder than you think. She comes off as pretty selfish, petty and shamelessly cruel at times. But there are also times when I thought Alice was very brave to actually act out things that most people only daydream of doing.

   I found myself starting this book with excitement and intrigue, and then it lulled for me in the middle, and came back around to being engaging again in the end. I think the part in the middle was so hard for me to get into because Alice was so frustrating to me. I had a hard time understanding why she was so cold and detached from the few people that truly cared for her. It felt to me that she just used everyone to meet whatever ends were best for her with absolutely no regard for how her actions affected those people.  Harvey was a sweet guy, he really stood by Alice, even when I wanted to shake him for doing so! It was hard to watch the constant blows to him and he just stood there through the storm with little thought of his own well being. In the end though the story did come back around and come to a very fitting resolution. I did appreciate the growth of the characters and the ending which I found perfectly fitting to this story. All in all it was an interesting story, but it wasn't exactly on par with my higher expectations of it.

"So here's the thing: popular people may have status, but the rest of us have power in numbers and, because of that, we have resources.... I guess you could call it, like, the nerd mafia"

That line made me literally laugh out loud because it perfectly describes how I felt about high school. I am not going to lie, I totally fantasized about terrible things happening to the popular kids. As much as I disagree with Alice's motivation I get why she wants revenge. And hey, who's to say people in the same situation wouldn't do the same thing. Alice thinks she is living on borrowed time so why not put some assholes in their place. Life lessons on both sides of that coin.