My Sister's Keeper

There are two kinds of good books. The ones that are very enjoyable to read but once you put them down, sooner or later, you forget about them. Then there are ones that you don't. They stay with you forever and change you and the way you look at life itself. My Sister's Keeper was one of those books. Since I read this book, it has been my benchmark book, my litmus test, if you will. Every time I finish a new book, I compare it to this and wonder how it fared. And for now only one book managed to be in the same level as this. And even that didn't make me cry half as much as this. No book ever did.

The book has everything you'd want in a book. It has really beautiful prose. The author talks about everyday things such as stars and fire and makes them seem so beautiful, it makes me wonder if we both are seeing the same thing. The story is touching and heartbreaking but it leaves a glimmer of hope. A person who manages to read this book without crying seriously needs to be awarded a Nobel Prize. And the characters have a depth unlike any other. Anna was undoubtedly my favourite followed closely by Jesse. I actually had to stop reading because my eyes were so blurry at the part where Anna is thinking about her funeral and how it will be so much different from Kate's. And even though I haven't talked about them a lot, Campbell and Julia's story was very interesting. One of the many reasons, this story is so close to my heart was because I fell in love with Anna almost in the start of the book, when Brian says:

“...Anna is our family's constant. Anna comes in with a smile. Anna tells us about the robin she found with the broken wing and a blush on its cheek; or about the mother she saw at Wal-Mart with not one but two sets of twins. Anna gives us a backbeat, and seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realise that silence has a sound.”

And if that quote alone doesn't make you read this book, I don't know what will. Sure, the book's ending is going to rip your heart out,stomp on it with spiky shoes and then pass it though a shredder but it is still worth it,if you ask me.

This book was one hell of an Emotional journey, What I loved is the portrayal of every character, there is no bad guy. it's just their choices which are creating havoc in everyone's life.
You will not able to put this book down until you finish it, you will indulge yourself in the book, root for your favorite character till you finish it.
The possibility is, in the End, you will feel cheated. Not that I am a sucker for happy endings it's just that it feels easy writing and rushed ending.
well, even then I'll suggest everyone to read this book.

I didn't finish this one, so I'm giving myself an incomplete. I got to page 84 before I decided I can't read this anymore. I'm giving it four stars because I liked what I read. So why did I stop reading? Because the story hit too close to home with me. When I was 17, I got sick. I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, or ALL for short. Reading Sara's flashbacks to when Kate got sick, took me back to my own treatment and how my own mom dealt with it. I was reading some of that on my lunch break at work and damn near starting crying!

Reading for me is an escape. Time to get lost in someone else world. This book didn't allow me to escape. It brought back my past, something I don't like thinking about every day. I'm healthy now and have been for years, but some things I haven't dealt with and maybe it's better that way. It allows me to move on with me life and be as normal as I can be.

I wanted to read this book because of Anna's decision to fight against her family for her own rights to her own body. I plan on reading more of Jodi Picoult's books, just not this one. I also wanted to read the book before I saw the movie. I think I'll just watch the movie instead.

No one can make you donate a kidney... right? Apparently, that's not necessarily the case if you're 13 years old and not deemed mature enough to make your own decisions about whether or not you want to part with a bodily organ. That seems wrong to me, but I guess when it's a choice between risking and impacting your life (goodbye, contact sports) or potentially prolonging your terminally ill sister's life (if the surgery doesn't kill her), it's not so cut and dry. To separate the tangled web of conflicting best interests, a judge is appointed to determine who should have the final say over Anna's body.

This book has a pattern of not following through with consequences - The arsonist son is never caught, and eventually becomes a member of the police force. A judge rules in Anna's favour, but Anna never gets the opportunity to use her autonomy since she is declared brain dead after a car crash immediately following the verdict. - and that is the main disappointment with this book: that it does not let any of the characters take responsibility for any of the choices they make.

An interesting premise and the execution of the story wasn't terrible. But, my god was I ever disappointed in its ending. This was one book I almost threw across the room when I was done with it, and few books have given me that reaction. To put the reader through so much emotional shit just to have to read such an ending left me speechless. Actually, I don't think I'll touch another Picoult book again thanks to that ending.

If you choose to read this book I suggest you bring kleenex and pad the drywall just in case you have a similar reaction.

Oh my heart. This is the first book I've read by this author and I don't know how I even made it through. I could never imagine the pain, confusion, and heartbreak of this family let alone Anna. Being 13 years old is in itself a strange time of wonder and to be where she is, in this family, and have to struggle with life decisions where even grown ups would falter was hard to read. The ending was so completely unexpected I was reading through tears and could barely breathe. While this is a heavy read it was written beautifully and with grace.

Jodi Picoult definitely knows how to manipulate emotions. When I picked this book up, I was immediately dragged into the storyline by the plot devices Picoult chose – terminal illnesses, family dynamics, legal proceedings – but as I read it became increasingly clear to me that Picoult chose these things specifically because she knew they'd keep people reading. It was manipulative! I didn't care about these characters because she wrote them well, I cared about them because you're supposed to care when a kid has cancer. If you don't care, you're heartless.

So it wasn't Picoult's writing that did it, because she certainly isn't the best writer in the world – sure, she knows how to zing you with a heartwrenching one-liner, and she knows how to place the cliches and “meaningful” statements at the ends of chapters and paragraphs to really get the tearjerking hook into you – but it's all manipulation, and it's all pretty cheap. Once I realized what I was reading I almost felt dirty, like I'd been tricked.

And one other quibble I have with this book – changing fonts between narrators is jarring. Your eyes get used to reading in arial and the next chapter's in times new roman? That's not cool. I had to put the book down and take a break between each chapter because of it. I didn't like that at all.