Zac and Mia
by A.J. Betts
Pages: 306
Published on September 2nd 2014
by HMH Books for Young Readers
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads
The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this tough and tender young adult novel that's a lot about love (and a little about cancer).
Winner of the 2012 Australian Text Prize
"When I was little I believed in Jesus and Santa, spontaneous combustion, and the Loch Ness monster. Now I believe in science, statistics, and antibiotics." So says seventeen-year-old Zac Meier during a long, grueling leukemia treatment in Perth, Australia. A loud blast of Lady Gaga alerts him to the presence of Mia, the angry, not-at-all-stoic cancer patient in the room next door. Once released, the two near-strangers can't forget each other, even as they desperately try to resume normal lives. The story of their mysterious connection drives this unflinchingly tough, tender novel told in two voices.
I received this book for free from the publisher or author in exchange for an honest review.
This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Sigh. That’s about all I can do now. And it’s not a really good one. It’s not a bad one either. It’s meh. Did I expect to much? Yeah, I think I did. I expected an awesome book like The Fault In Our Stars. And while it had some aspects of that one, Zac and Mia left me a bit disappointed.
Zac and Mia is about, obviously, Zac and Mia. Zac has leukemia and is in the hospital for the hundredth time now. One day a new patient moves into the room next to him, Lady Gaga music blaring throughout the ward from her room. Unexpectedly they become friends and go through their time at the hospital and afterwards together.
Don’t get me wrong! I did like this book!It wasn’t bad, it really wasn’t. I just expected too much. I loved Zac. He was so sweet and caring and selfless. But stubborn too. And a typical guy sometimes. I liked Mia, but I didn’t feel connected to her. Not like with Zac. The rest of the characters were the same. There wasn’t much to them. I think that’s the thing that went wrong with this book. The writing wasn’t bad and the story itself was okay. It’s just the characters that fell a bit flat to me.
The story wasn’t bad. For me it was a bit boring. Almost nothing really happens in this book. I expected a big shocking thing at the end like always with these kind of books, but even that was not that big and I kind of predicted it. So yeah, it was a bit predictable at times. Still, whenever I put down the book for a minute, I felt compelled to finish it. I just wanted to know what happened next. It may be a bit boring and predictable, it did pull me in and never really let me go.
So in the end Zac and Mia was a pretty good book. Was it The Fault In Our Stars meets Eleanor & Park? Not quite. I was a bit disappointed, but I just expected too much from this. If you liked The Fault In Our Stars, I do suggest you give this a try. It’s not up in the same league as TFIOS, but it’s still good.
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I am so over meh books. It’s almost worse than bad books because at least with bad books they bring out more emotion.
Twitter: Liza
Too bad that you didn’t love it as much as you were expecting it to 🙁
Twitter: The Infinite Limits of Love
I personally think book summaries need to stop with the “X book meets Y book” thing. It makes you have a really high expectations and then when it doesn’t deliver, you’re left disappointed.
Meh books are the worst. I can’t say I was particularly excited about this, but I don’t think I’ll be reading this.
Lovely review!
Twitter: Bieke Paesen
They really do need to stop that. Yeah it makes me excited but it raises my expectations way too high. Sometimes it pays off, but most of the time it doesn’t.
Yeah, I think my expectations are pretty high for this one too. I’ll need to lower them before reading this so I’m not disappointed as well. I’m glad to see you still enjoyed it, but sorry it didn’t have the wow factor for you. 🙂
Twitter: Bieke Paesen
I think it’d be good to have lower expectations, that way you’ll enjoy it a bit more I think. 🙂
Aw, it’s a shame your expectations weren’t met. 🙁 That’s what sucks when books are compared to each other, because one was so great, we expect the next book compared to it, to be like that too.
In this case, Zac and Mia had two shots against them, 1)being compared to TFIOS and 2)being compared to Eleanor and Park. The latter of which I loved, the former, I very much enjoyed.
I’ll check this out at the library some time though. I do like the idea of it.
Twitter: Bieke Paesen
It makes you pick up the book but it raises your expectations so. 😛