Invincible

February 15, 2015
Evie, 17, bravely faces terminal illness along with her fellow teen sufferers, until fate intervenes; unlike Stella and Caleb, Evie miraculously recovers: "There has been a mistake. Or a miracle."Thrown into limbo and unable to resume her picture-perfect cheerleader's life, complete with football-playing boyfriend Will, Evie writes to now-dead Stella: "If I'm not Cancer Girl, who am I exactly? Crutches Girl?...No one knows what to do with me now that I'm alive." Trapped in her life and her still-weak body, Evie experiments with painkillers, alcohol and a relationship with rebellious teen Marcus (foil to steady Will and sweet Caleb), whom she meets while high on pot. Her connection to Marcus is defined by a mutual commitment to bad decisions, though even stoner Marcus urges Evie to avoid Oxycontin. Like Evie's puzzled and hurt friends and family (who feel she's ungrateful and manipulative), readers may find themselves alienated by Evie's bad behavior, a gutsy move for Reed. The book's epiphanic ending may come too late to salvage readers' relationships with her-or Evie's life. Or not. Readers will be intrigued or vexed by the ambiguity of the ending, depending on their tolerance for plot twists. Offering a provocative spin on the typical teen-with-cancer plotline, Reed risks her protagonist's likability to explore the aftermath of life-altering second chances. (Fiction. 14-18)

May 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-Evie, a self-described Cancer Girl, transitions from palliative care with end-stage Ewing's sarcoma to miracle girl. Instead of shuffling off her mortal coil after being taken on a last mad adventure from the hospital by goth girl Stella, who with her signature fedora and red lipstick is also battling cancer, Evie unaccountably rallies. Perhaps it is the shock of losing friends made in the cancer ward, the new lease on life, or the carpe diem philosophy shared by rebel Stella, but miracle Evie has lost her taste for cheerleading, her best friend, and even Will, the boyfriend who never let her down through the long months of her illness. It's difficult to care much for Evie as a character, beyond basic sympathy for any person dealing with a painful illness, because she doesn't ever really emerge beyond the page. When Evie's back to her pre-cancer life, she meets new romantic interest Marcus on an escape from her intolerably loving home. He's different and happy to share the pot bequeathed by a cancer comrade; and compared to tame Will, Marcus seems like a fascinating bad boy. Yet it's Evie who attempts to numb herself with pills, weed, and booze, leading to a crisis cliff-hanger ending. VERDICT A decent choice for readers with a craving for "dying teen" stories.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2015
Grades 9-12 Evie's aggressive case of Ewing's sarcoma has left her with only weeks to live, and she has resigned herself, to her parents' dismay, to palliative care. But miraculously, seemingly overnight, her cancer disappears. It's an abrupt change that's hard to handle, and it gets worse after her best friend in the ward, larger-than-life Stella, succumbs to leukemia. Evie doesn't know what to do with all her emotions about her second chance nor the survival guilt she feels after Stella dies. Everything her peers care about now seems trivial, and her life becomes a downward spiral of drugs, drinking, and bitterness, all in an effort to block the feelings she is terrified to face. When she meets alluring Marcus, who sympathizes with her pain, Evie loses all interest in anything else, until her anger and fear lead her to alienate even him. Though some readers might be frustrated by Evie's protracted refusal to accept help or love, Reed nonetheless builds a compelling first-person narrative and sensitively explores Evie's effortsand failuresto rebuild her life after a serious trauma.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)