[Review] Save Steve - Jenni Hendriks, Ted Caplan

Summary: Steve Stevenson is an asshole. That might not be a cool thing to say about someone with cancer, but it’s true. Yeah, he throws legendary parties and is the most popular guy in school, but he also loves humiliating pranks, Cardi B, and doesn’t recycle. Worst of all, he’s dating Kaia—the girl of nice guy Cam’s dreams.

But when a desperate Kaia asks Cam to help her raise money to pay for Steve’s experimental treatment, Cam offers to organize the biggest, most viral fundraising campaign—SaveSteve.org. Maybe then Kaia will finally see Cam as the perfect, thoughtful, altruistic, good guy for her. But Steve’s no fool. He’s totally on to Cam’s plan. And to stop him from stealing his girlfriend, he’s going to do whatever it takes to make Cam’s life as miserable as his own. (Pub Date: Sep 01, 2020)

This was a very different coming-of-age story about a boy trying to beat cancer—meaning, the boy with cancer whom his crush is dating.

Cam has wanted to ask Kaia out many protests and campaigns ago but never saw the perfect moment, until he finds out she's dating popular boy Steve. Who also happens to have (the good kind and very curable) cancer. To impress her, he ends up fronting a new campaign with Kaia to get funds for Steve's treatment, but Steve is onto this good guy act and makes sure the campaign doesn't run so smoothly by making Cam do crazy stunts until he gives up.

3.5. 

This was uncommon and unpredictable but it also dragged a lot. Whenever there was something funny, it wasn't funny enough to make me laugh hard and compensate how this is basically a sarcastic story. I didn't remember the writers worked for television but I still kept thinking how much better this would work as a movie or some short series. As a book, it's hard to identify why but it didn't work so well; great idea, bad execution. It was hard to really cheer for Cam, not because he was using a boy with cancer to get a girl because Steve really wasn't any better, but he was just kind of a drag. And it was hard to like Kaia, when she seemed to change her mind the moment Cam did what she wanted and then make things harder for him—in a "just because the writer wanted" way, I mean.

This is a fun story, there's a couple of hilarious moments too, but I just went ha ha most of the time. I feel the visuals, the dynamics of a movie would fill in what seemed to be missing here. It' sstill different and a good break from the romantic YA's that seem to overwhelm the non-fantasy side of the genre. But I really hope for a live action version.


Honest review based on an ARC provided by Edelweiss. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 3 out of 5.