Zac and MIA

by A J Betts

[lindsey]

I've noticed a lot of comparisons between Zac and Mia and The Fault in Our Stars, but the only resemblance I found was that it was about two teens with cancer. I actually enjoyed Zac and Mia a lot more than The Fault in Our Stars. The characters in this book acted more like real teenagers than Hazel and Augustus.

But this review isn't about The Fault in Our Stars, so I'll move on. Zac and Mia focuses on Zac and Mia, of course, as they deal with cancer and its aftermath. I liked Zac more than Mia all the way through the book. But after thinking about the characters for a while after finishing the novel, I realized that the author did a really good job with writing them. Mia may have seemed unlikeable to me at first, and she may have done things that I couldn't understand, but she was dealing with a life-changing and deadly disease. Everyone deals with pain and grief in their own ways, and I liked that the author gave Zac and Mia such different personalities, and showed just how differently people react to the same problems.

I thought the novel was well-written and I enjoyed the character development - Zac's mostly. Though not a pleasant topic, the author still did a good job of including small bits of humor, which kept the book from getting too dark.