Search This Blog

Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sona Charaipotra


The youngest doctor in America, an Indian-American teen makes her rounds―and falls head over heels―in the contemporary romantic comedy Symptoms of a Heartbreak.
Fresh from med school, sixteen-year-old medical prodigy Saira arrives for her first day at her new job: treating children with cancer. 

She’s always had to balance family and friendships with her celebrity as the Girl Genius―but she’s never had to prove herself to skeptical adult co-workers while adjusting to real life-and-death stakes. And working in the same hospital as her mother certainly isn’t making things any easier.
But life gets complicated when Saira finds herself falling in love with a patient: a cute teen boy who’s been diagnosed with cancer. And when she risks her brand new career to try to improve his chances, it could cost her everything.
It turns out “heartbreak” is the one thing she still doesn’t know how to treat.
In her solo debut, Sona Charaipotra brings us a compelling #ownvoices protagonist who’s not afraid to chase what she wants. Symptoms of a Heartbreak goes from romantic comedy highs to tearjerker lows and is the ultimate cure-all for young adult readers needing an infusion of something heartfelt.

Review:



Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sona Charaipotra is the story about a girl genius trying to figure her life out. In this Solo debut, Saira Seghal is a 16 year old doctor who is starting at internship in the pediatric oncology ward of the hospital that her mother works at. Seghal has a lot of hurtles in this book. The first one being that she is a girl genius and is a 16 year old doctor. Her life is not normal. She had to grow up very fast which also makes her lacking in areas of her life. It can be hard to be this social media sensational genius and to still be a teenager that has teen emotions.

No matter how hard Saira worked, she was still a teenager and I think that was one of the hardest things for me. When you are doctor, you really shouldn’t mess up but when you are a teenager, you are kind of known for messing up. Saira had to figure all of this out while battling with her best friend, having her first crush, and keeping her boyfriend’s secret. I feel like that is a lot to put on a teenage girl especially one trying to treat children cancer patients.

The biggest thing I was disappointed about with this book is that I really wanted to see more of the hospital and medical conflicts in the book. Instead the story focused a lot on Saira’s friendships and Link, the boy she is crushing on. I wanted to see her be a doctor more than what we got. The feelings with Link were so instant that they were hard to believe at first. Eventually as the story goes on, those feelings are just a constant but I don’t feel like they ever really developed.

I felt like this book covered a lot of the missing out and what it is like to grow up faster than the world intends for you to. Saira really doesn’t understand what it is like to be a teenager and people want her to be an adult but she is still just a kid. Watching the characters try to overcome these complications were quite interesting. I really enjoyed the book and I think it had a log of good attributes. I would definitely recommend this book as long as you can handle reading about kids with cancer.

No comments