Review: Zac and Mia by A.J. Betts

The last person Zac expects in the room next door is a girl like Mia, angry and feisty with questionable taste in music. In the real world, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be friends with her. In hospital different rules apply, and what begins as a knock on the wall leads to a note—then a friendship neither of them sees coming.

You need courage to be in hospital; different courage to be back in the real world. In one of these worlds Zac needs Mia. And in the other Mia needs Zac. Or maybe they both need each other, always. (Goodreads)
 
I've been waiting for this book for a while. The idea of the two characters needing each other in different ways was intriguing to me, so lets get started! The book alternated between both Zac and Mia's point of view. I like that. I feel like it's more personal than a blanket third person POV. Zac was a pretty good character in my opinion. Zac was funny and witty, and I really liked his interactions with his mom (and his entire family), and his obsession with numbers and stats (although it was kind of sad). I'm also a fan of Zac and Mia's interactions.

Moving on to Mia... she's basically kind of a bitch. Mia was that popular beautiful girl, leader of the pack. When we first see her in the cancer ward she's a raging mess, but I can kind of understand that. We learn that she has the type of cancer that has very high survival odds but the loss of her hair and fact that she has to miss school dances. Again, I could understand, I assumed her fear of having cancer manifested into superficial worries. In actuality, I think she really was more upset about what her friends would think. It was pretty sad really.

As with all great books there was great character development that I don't want to say too much about but so you know, Mia get's her act together. There was lots of great little details in this book and I really liked the ending. I feel like it was very realistic. Two thumbs up.

3.75/ 4 stars