Diagnosis: Too Much. Symptoms of a Heartbreak

Sona Charaipotra's Symptoms of a Heartbreak (2019) in idea sounds great. A modern female Doogie Howser works to knock out cancer while trying to balance life as a teenager. In execution, however, the story...falls flat. It's unfortunate, really, because the book has so many good things going for it: teenage romance, friendship troubles, work drama, and overall likable secondary characters. On a technical front, the writing is also strong with effective pacing. An additional plus is that the story is centered around Indian-American female protagonist, sixteen-year-old Saira. So what's the issue? In the end, Symptoms of a Heartbreak suffers from too much: a lack of definition and focus on a central conflict.

In addition to balancing the everyday growing pains of teenage life with being a "girl genius" medical professional, Saira is also contending with the following: maintaining professional relations with a patient, managing others' expectations of her girlfriend status to a "boyfriend" who is not yet ready to come out of the closet, moving on from the death of her childhood friend, forgiving a current best friend who she's harboring anger towards and distancing herself from, competing against two other interns to remain in the program, treating three patients whose family situations present challenges,  defending herself against those who question her competence despite her "girl genius" status, all while also conflicting with her direct supervisor who holds power over her career, and really, Saira's life.

That's really too much. While Charaipotra's writing is strong enough to have coalesced all these components, the story suffered from a bit of superficiality from having to juggle them all. As such, it's really hard to say that Saira actually went through any kind of meaningful growth. Yes, she comes to important realizations, such as that being a doctor means having to deal with both life and death. However, it seems that all her a-ha moments come from others pointing them out to her.

In short, Symptoms of a Heartbreak is a well-written "meh." Its most significant contribution is in promoting BeTheMatch.org, a national marrow donor program.