Zac & Mia by A.J. Betts - Blog Tour Review and Giveaway!

Title: Zac & Mia
Author: A.J. Betts
 

Release Date: 24th July 2013

My Rating: 5/5

Blurb:

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.

In A Nutshell:

Zac and Mia is a heartfelt, emotional, uplifting and raw novel about cancer, friendship and hope. It is an amazing story and I hope you’ll love it as much as I do.

My Review:

Upon finishing Zac and Mia, words failed me. I can’t think of a book more deserving to win the Text Prize. Set in Western Australia, the novel is the story of Zac and Mia, two seventeen year olds with different types of cancer. The story, told in their alternating perspectives, illustrates two very different journeys that these kids must face at such a young age.

It is honest and raw and doesn’t hold back on the brutality of cancer, sharing what Zac and Mia experience: the chemo, losing their hair, the isolation (both physically and mentally), boredom, medications, the debilitating effects, statistics, overbearing parents, stages of denial, feelings of hopelessness and a desire not to be pitied.

But the story is also heartfelt, emotional and uplifting. It is not a miserable ‘sick-lit’ about two teenagers dying. It is a story about Zac and Mia, who, under horrible circumstances, meet and form a bond that can only be created when experiencing something significant together.

It is a story about how people react and handle the challenges they are faced with. A story of hope and not giving up. It is recognising and appreciating life and the simple things that others take for granted. It is about helping one another and offering support in any way, shape or form and being there even when they push you away. It is finding someone who understands you and coming to terms with your own reality. It is recognising that your life has changed but you don’t have to be defined by the cancer.

Please read Zac and Mia. You will not regret it.

I wash my hands, amused by the reflection in the mirror.

My head is bald, lumpy and asymmetrical, but my eyebrows are thicker than before.

I appear to be morphing into one of those creepy guys from Guess Who.
– Zac page 18

Also by A.J. Betts
Shutterspeed
Wavelength 

 

To celebrate the release of Zac and Mia, the third book by Australian author A.J. Betts and winner of the 2012 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing, I am participating in a blog tour along with a bunch of other lovely bloggers. You can see the other tour stops here. Thanks to Text Publishing, I have a copy of Zac and Mia to give away!

To enter, you must be a follower of this blog and live in Australia. Please fill out the form below. Entries close 27th August 2013 and the winner will be contacted via email.

**Update**
This competition is now closed. The winner has been contacted via email.
Thank you to all who entered :)