Dessert First

by Dean Gloster

Upbeat--that's Kat, the girl in the family who everyone turns to when things get difficult. Especially now, when her beloved younger brother Beep is in his second leukemia relapse, and a bone marrow transplant from Kat may be his only chance.
But Kat's worried that she and her bone marrow may not be up to the task: She can't even complete homework, and she's facing other rejection--lost friendships, a lost spot on the soccer team, and lots of heartache from her crush on her former best friend, Evan. Kat doesn't know if her bone marrow will save Beep, or whether she can save herself, let alone keep her promise to Beep that she'll enjoy life and always eat dessert first.
Dessert First is a funny, moving story about coping, appreciating sweetness, and learning to forgive.

Genres: Realistic Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction, Teen, Family, Romance, Illness

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 2, 2016

About the author

Dean Gloster is a former law clerk to two U.S. Supreme Court Justices and a former stand-up comedian. When not writing YA novels, he ski races during the winter (Super-G is his best event) and is enrolled in the low-residency MFA program in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he has the most amazingly wonderful classmates in the world. His wife Nancy Ricci works at the children’s hospice and respite care facility, The George Mark House in San Leandro, California, which inspired Dean in part to write his first novel. When Dean is not at home in Berkeley, California, Saucy the dog guards the commas in his manuscripts.
Writing, flying, and ski racing have lots in common: According to Douglas Adams, all you have to do is throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Reviews

[Grace {Rebel Mommy Book Blog} · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review
Desserts First caught my attention because of the title. I mean of course I want dessert first!! I am sure at some point I read the blurb when I requested it but I don't look at it again before I read it. Well, I was surely surprised when this book was not really about food but about cancer and how our MC (and her family) deals with her brother having it.

This book had way too much going on. There was so much more than just her brother having cancer. There were other people with cancer, her crush on a friend, catfishing of a friend, an online friend who she was scared would kill herself, lots of bullying at school and dealing with school in general with all the other stuff going on. While I appreciated these tough subjects being tackled, I think it was one (maybe three) too many to properly address them.

Then our MC Kat is a wee bit abrasive. Totally get she has a really hard situation but it was almost hard to like her at times. She did start to recognize this and grow during the book which was something I loved to see. There were other characters that I did enjoy quite a bit including her  brother and her crush. Then there were characters who were awful including the mean girl bullies. Man they were rough and the bullying seemed so over the top.

This mostly sounds negative I know but honestly, I found it got better as it went on and I was pretty invested in the story. While a bit predictable I still wanted to see how it played out. And it played out with me sobbing more than once. This was a debut so while I had my issues with this I am definitely looking forward to more from this author.This review was originally posted on Rebel Mommy Book Blog

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens when a stand-up comedian writes a novel about cancer? Well, you get cancer sibling Kat, snarky sister of the precociously wise dying boy Beep, who hides her pain and fear behind jokes and fictitious identities. My eyes blurred with tears at least five times while reading this book (they were running down my face at about the halfway mark) but I also laughed. I loved Kat, Beep, her best friend and love interest Evan, and Hunter, Kay's long-distance sort-of-boyfriend. This is a terrific debut.

[Chase Hackett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book won me over about halfway down the first page. Even more amazing to me--it never lost me.

I laughed, I quoted lines to people because they were so funny--and I was a mess on the subway.

A powerful book.

[Suze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kat is the strong one at home. She's always positive and is there for her brother Beep whenever her needs her. Beep has leukemia and Kat is the one who makes his hospital stays bearable by making sure he has some fun. She understands him perfectly, but that can't be said about her sister Rachel. Before Beep became ill Kat and Rachel were close, but since then they've been having problems and every time they see each other things are awful.

Kat's only escape is Evan, the boy she's liked for quite some time. Evan used to be her best friend, but he's given her a lot of grief too. Evan wants things to be the way they were again, but Kat isn't sure she's ready. Things at school are difficult and with her worries about Beep at home there isn't much more stress she can take. Plus she has a close online friend, someone who's very dear to her even though she's never met him. When Beep needs Kat's bone marrow she's worried about the outcome. It's the only option he has left, but what if it doesn't save him?

Dessert First is a mind-blowing emotional story. Kat has a fantastic personality. She's kind, caring and understanding. She loves with all her heart and she wants to make the people she loves as happy as she can. She often forgets herself in the process. Beep is her whole world and she's used to spending time at the hospital with him and cheering him up. My heart ached for her at times because she definitely doesn't have an easy life. She's been through a lot more than most teenagers and she manages to keep going no matter what happens to her. I found that incredible and loved the way Dean Gloster portrayed her.

Dessert First is a book I will remember for a long time. It's a beautiful multilayered story. I often had tears in my eyes while reading this story. Sadness is part of life and Dean Gloster writes about it in a amazing intense way. I was impressed by the empathic way he writes about Beep. He's perfectly captured the impact his illness has on his family and also the way it is for Beep himself. I loved his empathy and his honest and raw way of describing things.

Other important themes of Desert First are hopes and dreams, family, friendship and of course love. Dean Gloster writes about what matters most in life in a brilliant way and the title suits the story exceptionally well. I highly recommend this profound moving story, it really took my breath away.

[Beverly Diehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you cope when you're a teenager, and your little brother has cancer? Again. Probably not very well. Kat Monroe covers her fear and grief with a hearty serving of snark and sarcasm. She struggles in school, she fights with her older sister... and I liked her tremendously, anyway.

Disclaimer: I'm acquainted with the author via social media.

There's even a love triangle of sorts here, thought not the kind I'd ever read before. Not everyone gets a happy ending, but I really enjoyed the book, some of the twists I hadn't anticipated, and feel it'll be staying with me for a long time.

[Sasha Bredenhof · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such. a. good. book. A mix of humour and tragedy, but also hope. So much hope. I related to the main character so much, and it had me both laughing and crying.
Beautiful beautiful story about the love between siblings, grief, and love.

[J. Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Monroe family is dealing with cancer. Beep's cancer. (The youngest Monroe.) Gloster writes a moving story about the grief of death but without ever losing sight of the joy in life: The mother who is losing her son, but who can still ground her daughter for breaking the "no boys in the house rule when parents aren't home." The dad who hides at work to avoid the pain, but in the end allows it to find him. And the sisters whose endless inane battles help keep them breathing through one of the worst years of their lives. There is pain and sadness in this book, but there are also jokes, and first loves, and pen pals, and cute pets, and, of course...there is dessert. A gorgeous read.

[John Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where is the line between your stuff and the rest of your family's junk? Even when you're an adult, it's is frequently blurry and messy at the best of times. Inagine how confusing it becomes when you're sixteen, dealing with an emotionally labile mother, a workaholic father, a sister who despises you and a lovable twelve year old brother who may soon die of cancer. Meet Kat, dealing with depression, massive bouts of self-doubt, hugely ambivalent feelings about Evan, the guy who used to be her best friend(and maybe more), who yo-yoed away from her three times to get in a relationship with the uber mean girl at school, but now wants to reconnect.
Kat does her best to avoud a complete meltdown while functioning as the spokesperson for the family in terms of updatting the world about brother Beep's condition. It isn't easy, especially when her mother behaves like a helicopter mom with armed weaponry. Kat copes as best she can by creating an online persona she calls Cipher, who anonymously flirts with Evan and befriends Drowngirl, a very sad and desperate teen who sees Kat as her only friend.
Kat has another online friend, Hunter, an eighteen year old guy on the east coast who is battling cancer as well. When Beep's situation gets worse, Kat's bone marrow is his last hope. What happens to Kat, Beep, Hunter, Evan, Drowngirl and the rest of her family could have easily turned into one of those books that's all over the place. Instead, Dean Gloster gives us a vivid portrait, a deeply satisfying emotional landscape, if you will. It mixes sadness, anger, love, hope, grief, self-discovery and forgiveness perfectly. Nobody in the story comes away unscathed, but isn't real life like that? It's a great book for libraries to own where real life issues are important.

[Jemiscoe Chambers-Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean Gloster's debut novel, Dessert First was so good. Great in fact! I could not put it down and stayed up all night to finish it. It was an emotional book roller coaster because one minute I'm laughing out loud, and then the next second I'm angry right alongside the main character, Kat, and then I'm bawling my eyes out. I highly recommend this gem!

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dessert First is about a confused girl with a life that she would swap for anything. Losing her brother and her boyfriend from cancer to losing a friendship because of a misunderstanding and beating up a girl at the back of the school were causes of Kat feeling terrible.

When I picked up the book I was sort of confused about its name... and I was confused until the end of the book. The book's name has an incredible reason to why it's Dessert First; "that wasn't eating Dessert First-it was skipping dessert completely." The wishes of her lost friends...

[Ally]

I absolutely loved this book I highly recommend it!

[Michaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defied all my expectations. Ugly crying is great 🙃.

[Candace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing is wonderful, great plot, lots of feels, voice is superb.

[Martalti Moon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally posted at www.martasbookshelf.blogspot.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

Kat is a really strong and defined character. At such a young age, she has to deal with a lot of dark and heart-shattering things. Other than her little brother's cancer relapse, she has to deal with teenage-like issues such as heartbreak, friendships and high school drama. She has adopted the parental role, as her mother is living in the desperation of an anxious disorder and her father is barely home because of his job as a lawyer. Her older sister is distant, focused on her love life and constantly attacking Kat, and though she sounds like a character you would not like at all, truth is, she is one of my favourites, especially towards the end.

Let's discuss Beep, the brave little kid suffering from cancer and a quite peculiar family. It struck me to see him being so selfless, carrying an illness like leukemia and still caring more about others than himself. His will to fight and dark sense of humor made him shine within the darkness surrounding the book. Beep has become the only thing Kat can focus on, so we could say he is the key to the story, the reason our main character is the way she is.

High school, friends and lovers are a very important part of the story. I am going to be honest here, when I first started reading I was a bit let down by high school drama taking such a big paper in the plotline, because I felt like it was overdramatised and unfocused on the main plot, which was supposed to be Beep. But then, everything falls into place, and what at first seemed overdramatised makes perfect sense and is actually necessary to build Kat and the bonds between her and other people.


In this novel we get to see some really awful classmates and mean comments, but we also get to witness a brilliant relationship between Kat and her former best friend (and crush) Evan. After a few past tragedies of their own, they go back to what they were before they grew apart, and that is beautiful. I really appreciated Evan and his presence in the story.

What I really loved about the novel is how beautifully and truthfully it is written. The author style is literally one of my favorites: full of sarcasm and life messages, metaphors and a very accurate representation of feelings. There is a great research behind these pages, and for that I am thankful, because I could believe every single word I read.

Dessert First is so funny that I even felt bad for laughing at certain jokes, but it really does get impossible to keep a straight face when Kat is being sarcastic, or even Beep! No wonder Dean Gloster is a comedian! He does it incredibly well, because the humor makes it a lot easier to go through such a hard and heart-breaking story.

I would call this book a color explosion, because it is definitely painted with some dark blues, but also with the sweetest pink and lightest spring green. I would recommend it a 100% to fans of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Eleanor&Park by Rainbow Rowell and If I Stay by Gayle Forman. Dessert First is a shocker, a moving story about life and death, love and emptiness, and hope.

[Nola · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, thanks to MerittPress for sending me this copy. And now my conscience is clear enough to start telling you what a wreck I found this book to be. Kat, middle child and supposedly constantly upbeat, finds out that her brother has had a cancer relapse and has to begin chemo again immediately. The first chapters of the book make this sound as though this information invokes routine, which in some form it is for her family, but there is no adjustment period for the reader. You were here, now you're here, and that's it. Nothing else. Reading the back cover of this book, all I could think was how sick (not meant as a bad pun) I was of reading YA novels where one of the main characters has cancer. I definitely think there should be books concerning the topic, but ones that are hopefully well written. You can't decide whether to be angry at Kat or to pity her. I flip-flopped between the two, trying to grasp what the author was attempting to portray with her blatant unlike ability. I feel as though 'The Fault in Our Stars' inspired too many poorly written books about cancer and hope. Poor Beep and Kat and Rachel. They deserved a better story.

[Tabitha Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean Gloster's young adult novel DESSERT FIRST is a beautifully written, compassionate story of a young girl dealing with the painful realities of her brother's fight with cancer, while at the same time navigating her own tumultuous teenage experience. Sixteen year-old Kat has had to grow up quickly, with much of her family's attention focused on her brother and his illness. But in many ways, Kat faces the everyday challenges of a normal teenager - a first crush, difficulties with friends, and a messy sibling relationship. Gloster captures Kat's voice with authenticity, humor, and sensitivity. With DESSERT FIRST, he delivers a moving story that doesn't shy away from the pain, but also serves up a generous portion of hope and a large dollop of forgiveness. Read my full interview with Dean Gloster on Book Club Babble here: http://wp.me/p6YrYd-tE

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Kat is a complicated, intense character who is going through a lot. I was hooked by page three.

Of course it's a tear jerker, I mean it's a book with childhood cancer and how it affects the people who have it and the people who surround them. So, it's sad, but life is sad and short. Eat dessert first!

[lily doligosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

i don’t write reviews but i cried and i loved it. dean gloster PLEASE stop posting about owls on facebook and doing aikido. or maybe keep doing those things and also write. it’s been 8 years and while i started this book 2 days ago i want more. anyways live, laugh, eat dessert first.

[Readingraynbow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Minus all the swearing and profanity, it's a good book.

[Thaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Writing was mid.

[Sep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could not put this book down. It gripped me from the first paragraph: "I've thought a lot about what happens when we die, and I'm pretty sure it's not reincarnation. No loving and merciful God would put us through high school twice."

Kat's little brother, Beep, is fighting a recurrence of leukemia. Her bone marrow may help though Kat has her doubts. She has a lot on her plate. She keeps Beep's Facebook page upbeat despite his constant brushes with death. She sits in Beep's hospital room for hours. She tries to cope with a mom who has an anxiety disorder and a father who deals with the stress by working night and day. (In his defense it's his health insurance that is paying for all of Beep's treatments.) Then, there's Kat's big sister the beautiful Rachel who is not only getting straight A's and has a boy friend. Kat can't manage to get her homework done and the boy she likes betrayed her in the past and now just wants to be friends.

This book covers a lot of topics. Cancer, mourning, friendship, bullying but it also covers forgiveness--of both yourself and others. Mr. Gloster puts his characters through a lot but they emerge stronger and better versions of themselves. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. (Bring a hanky.)

[Amy Smart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I realize I’m a little older than the target audience for this book, but I still enjoyed it. I was drawn into the story from the first sentence and quickly came to appreciate Kat’s sarcastic sense of humor. Her awkward experiences in high school and struggles with trusting people are things that I’m sure all teenagers can relate to at some point (I know I did).
The story shows how difficulties (in this case, Kat’s little brother fighting Cancer), affect entire families and the people around them. Everyone tries to cope with stress in different ways and this was shown quite clearly in Kat’s family. Going through stressful times can also bring people together. Readers are reminded that pain is sometimes an unavoidable part of life and they can grow through it, becoming better people and learning valuable lessons in the process. They will come away from this book having learned more about the power of forgiveness, and reminded to make time for the fun things in life, like eating dessert first!

[Polly B · Rating 4 out of 5]

WARNING: I AM NOT A GOOD REVIEWER, BUT I HOPE I DID OK xoxo

Woah. Dean Gloster is one hell of a writer. This is his debut novel and he did an amazing job.
If you're anything like me, you'll cry through practically the whole thing (lol) but still enjoy it.
I really liked Kat. She's funny, sarcastic, brave, and kind. I loved her and Evan. They were adorable together. Evan was an awesome guy.
This book obviously talks about serious things (like child cancer, suicidal thoughts, death) but Gloster somehow intertwines humor into it (obviously it's still sad) but it's not so down and dark that it's extremely depressing.
It was sorta My Sister's Keeper-ish (in my opinion anyway). I didn't read the book, but I saw the movie (obviously cried, duh) and got a little of that feeling in the book.
Anyway this review was probably terrible so just scroll til you find a better one. Lol :D
Enjoy the book! xoxo

[Ella Carvalho · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book correlates with the story of this book that would make just about everyone smile. The phrase “dessert first” may bring people back to the childhood days. Where they so desperately wanted the chocolate before the sandwich. This is exactly what Kat wants. To eat dessert first. To be a child for as long as she can. To never grow up. Kats brother (beep) is young (about 12) and having a relapse of cancer for the third time. As well as other unexpected things along the way. He wants to savor the time he has as a child and eat dessert first. Something that he constantly reminds Kat to do, ever single day.

[Merriam Sarcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fabulous - hard to imagine a "funny" book that deals with cancer and dying, but Dean Gloster pulls it off. I did go through a box of kleenex while reading, so beware, but it was SO well worth the combination of laughing and crying! I am a psychotherapist, and from that standpoint, the author weaves together a very realistic and empathetic portrayal of a teen and family's experience dealing with illness.

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent book but I also know I will never re-read it because I don’t want to go through that emotional pain twice.

This book will wreck you, multiple times. I feel for Kat and her entire family. There were a few ‘surprises’ but I picked up on the hints and figured them out earlier on, unlike the main event (which I was in denial would actually happen and was completely thrown off when it happened halfway through the book).

[Allison Samson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was book was amazing. I bawled my eyes out at the saddest part of the book. This book really taught me important lessons. You have to move on. Things will eventually get better. Always be yourself. You are enough. These were just a few, but there’s many more. I want to reread this book over and over and never stop. The ending is so heartfelt and it’s my favorite book and I have ever read in my life. I’m being so serious on that. Totally recommend. Read ASAP!

[Suzan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Purchased this for my niece dues to her mentioning and other word of mouth.

She cane back and said that she had read it but it felt it wasn’t really writing in a perspective of someone younger. It seemed like an adult trying to pretend. Glossy. Not gritty.

No re-reads. Straight to donations. Hopefully someone else will enjoy it.

[Anjali Dajee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is literally the only one that has ever made me cry. It was so emotional and moving and I could definitely relate to Kat in some parts of the book. Dean Gloster did a fantastic job with this novel and I hope I can find a book good enough to read after this one

[Allison B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a touching story of a girl trying to feel confident in herself and with her family and friends. She goes through many hardships to find her true feelings about everyone, even herself.