My Sister's Keeper
by Jodi Picoult
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Book Reviews of My Sister's Keeper
Book Review: Real Tear-Jerker
Summary: 5 Stars
This book definitely pulls on the heart strings. I knew that going in; however, I was surprised at how much this book affected me, even before the ending. Jodi Picoult is an excellent writer/ philosopher. This book constantly caused me to think about all sorts of interpersonal relationships throughout my lifetime. It made me re-examine some of my own past issues and even helped me release a few of them and put them behind me. I didn't even know some of the issues were lurking there, just under the surface.
I was surprised at how many different emotions the book stirred up. This book is not just about two sisters struggling with a life/death situation. It delves into the different ways family, friends, and mere acquaintences treat all the members of a family coping with a terminal illness of a loved one - how living with the imminent death of someone in the household day-after-day, year-after-year can steal the life from the entire household, yet the love is still there.
Have your tissues handy. Reading this book in public might cause one to embarrass one's self!
Book Review: Awful.
Summary: 1 Stars
This book was so horrible that it rendered me speechless. I know that it is an unpopular opinion to these characters, and yet they are completely unsympathetic - Picoult finds a way to make me not feel a single pang of remorse or pity for a woman whose daughter has cancer. How? By making that daughter the mother of a child who smokes up, distills moonshine, and sets fires around town so that he can feel, and she just doesn't care. By writing a trite subplot involving the anti-hero (the materialistic lawyer) and the guardian ad litem with the heart of gold. As for the reason that they've been separated for 20 years - I've read better in drugstore romance novels). And after all those pages of angst and whatever, their story comes to a sudden and cliche ending.
The romantic subplot's ending has nothing, though, on the novel's big finale. It managed to be not only a cop out, but one that made me regret wasting my weekend reading this book. The ending is so bad that it overshadowed the fact that I spent the previous 400+ pages wanting to throttle the mother.
Book Review: Schmaltz and reader manipulation
Summary: 1 Stars
I agree with the review titled "Oh, if she'd only stopped twenty pages before it actually ended" by Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal.
I especially agree with what he said about Sara. Most of what I know about the legal system, I've read in novels, but surely no real judge would have allowed Sara to be opposing counsel for this hearing. The writing and characterization is so schmaltzy and hokey, it became more annoying with every page. The ending wasn't really a surprise, since readers of Jodi Picoult's novels have come to expect something unexpected at the last minute, but this one is so preposterous, it leaves me stuttering.
The only believable aspect of the whole novel is the effect the family's focus on Kate has had on Anna and her brother. Thankfully, I've never been in such a harrowing struggle, but wouldn't parents who are so devoted to one child get at least a little bit concerned over all the acting out their son is doing. The ending to his story, however, is just as unrealistic as so many other things in this book.
Book Review: Beautiful, complex story that'll make you cry
Summary: 5 Stars
Anna is a lost little girl. She's been to the hospital numerous times but isn't sick. At an early age, her parents told her she was conceived specifically for the purpose of keeping her sister, Kate, alive. Now at the age of 13, she struggles with her identity and is at a loss because she doesn't know who she is without her sister. Anna's whole identity is intertwined with her. After years of medical procedures where she gives up more and more of herself, Anna decides she's had enough and sues her parents for the right to have a say over what happens to her body.
This story latches onto you from the start. I couldn't put it down. It is brilliantly written and expertly crafted. At first it seems so simple, the parents are at fault, heartless and cruel at putting Anna's life at constant risk to save Kate. But as the story progresses, you begin to realize that it isn't so clear cut. What you're faced with is a heart-breaking story of a family struggling with a child who has a deadly disease and its tragic impact on each family member.
Book Review: Worst deus ex machina ever
Summary: 1 Stars
Ugh. I spent a gazillion hours reading this book. And those are hours that I am never going to get back,unfortunately.
First of all, any good hospital would have put a stop to the sort of treatments that the younger daughter Anna, had to go through to save the life of her sister Kate who has leukemia. She is a child concieved to give her sister a match for bone marrow that she needs. People were horrified when her parents concieved her for that purpose. And then after suing her parents to be emancipated so she does not have to donate bone marrow ,in the end
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she's killed in a car accident and Kate gets Anna's kidney.
Oh and can we talk about the cornball dialogue?Especially Campell's responses every time someone asks him why he has a guide dog(he's an epileptic-and he drives,he became a epileptic because of-oh irony- a car accident. Ane yet he still har a drivers licence? whut?)