[ARC Review] The F-It List by Julie Halpern

Monday, November 11, 2013


Title: The F-It List
Author: Julie Halpern
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: November 12, 2013
Source: ARC received from Publisher in exchange for honest review

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With her signature heart and humor, Julie Halpern explores a strained friendship strengthened by one girl’s battle with cancer.

Alex’s father recently died in a car accident. And on the night of his funeral, her best friend Becca slept with Alex’s boyfriend. So things aren’t great. Alex steps away from her friendship with Becca and focuses on her family.

But when Alex finally decides to forgive Becca, she finds out something that will change her world again--Becca has cancer.

So what do you do when your best friend has cancer? You help her shave her head. And then you take her bucket list and try to fulfill it on her behalf. Because if that’s all you can do to help your ailing friend--you do it.



I have read many YA books that deal with teenage cancer and honestly they are all extremely similar in their sadness and are at times very depressing. But The F-It List was a breath of fresh air. Not only does it show the heartache behind a best friend finding out her oldest friend has cancer, but it makes light of certain situations that made this story even more real and amazing in my book.

Becca and Alex have a bucket list, which they have named The F-IT list that has 23 items that need to be completed in case Becca dies before she can complete them. And she enlists the help of her best friend Alex to help her complete this list as soon as possible. What happens throughout the book is both heartbreaking and hilarious. The juxtaposition of the comedy and the very serious nature of the decease made me love this book so much more. It made everything seem so genuine.

The characters themselves were brilliant because they were normal and had normal reactions to over the stop situations. I loved that the love story was secondary at the beginning but turned into something that would forver change both Becca and Alex. I also loved that this story was an alternate perspective to a situation that is normally told first hand. This book shows how this decease affects the people around them, school mates, family and most of all a best friend. I really loved that.

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1 comments

  1. I love that there was the realness of the situation at hand but also hilarity mixed into it. This sounds better than I thought. Thanks for the review!

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