Overall, I found the portrayal of pediatric cancer iffy — better than some, worse than others. Rather than unthinking stereotypes, though, these shortcomings felt like a result of a lack of personal experience or oversights in research.
Despite their proclamations to the contrary — “don’t tell me you’re one of those people who becomes their disease” — the characters are shown to have nothing in their lives that isn’t about their cancer.
“I learned absolutely nothing from Rachel’s leukemia,” this book’s protagonist starts off in its in-universe foreword, and I grinned and said, “YES! This is going to be good.”
