The Book Side Effects By Keith Whitney

Imagine you’re only 15 and you lost bother of your parents and now your 23 year old brother has to take care of you and the rest of the family. Well this actually happened in the book Side Effects by Jen Calonita. The main character is Whitney who lost her mom to cancer when she was 13, and then when she was 14 her dad left his family due to stress. So that left Keith Whitney's older brother who is 23 to take care of the family of five. In the book whitney goes through a lot of changes which is expected since her family was splitting apart, but from the end to the beginning she changes majorly. She is changing because she starts off in the beginning depressed and stressed, in the middle of the book she turns angry, then by the end of the book

The first reason why whitney is depressed is because she has a team of bullies who bully her every day. They bully Whitney because she does not have any money, but the reason for her being broke is because she only has one income coming in. She is also being bullied by them because Whitney is a “pill popper”. They call her a “pill popper” because she has to take depression and anxiety pills often. The second reason why Whitney starts off depressed is obviously because she lost both off her parents. She lost her mom when she was 13 due to breast cancer. That's when the whole family started to fall apart. After her mother died they only had their dad’s income to survive off of which was a struggle and very stressful. So that's why the father left, he left because of the stress. He told the family that he was just going to apply for a job but he never came back. That’s when Whitney’s anxiety and depression got really bad. “ I Sometimes imagine what it would be like if my parents were still with us” (Calonita

She begins to find her happiness again because her family is slowly coming back together, the bullies have finally stopped picking on her, and she finally figures out what to do for the rest of her life. So the first reason why she starts to become happy is because her family starts coming back together. The reason for this is because they finally find their father and convince him to come home. Then a couple years after finding their father he finds a girl that soon becomes the family’s stepmom. That's when they start to live comfortably and everything is back to normal. The next reason why Whitney starts become reason is that the bullies stop picking on her. They stop because they soon realize there is nothing to pick on her about. This helps get rid of Whitney's depression and anxiety, it also makes her want to ge to school again. The last reason why she becomes happy is that she figures out what she wants to do for the rest of her life. She discovers that she wants to help families that have been split apart. This makes her happy because when she reunites the families she gets to experience what is was like with her family. “When I see the smiles on the family’s faces it takes me back” (Calonita