My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper
By Jodi Picoult
Fiction/Drama
$16.00 or $12.99 Kindle www.amazon.com
Released April 6, 2004

The librarian warned me that this was going to be a tearjerker. I took it anyway. I have never seen the movie based on the book so I had that going for me. This was my third Picoult book; the previous ones were also sad. This book was rather bleak from beginning to end. Don't get me wrong-it's a good book and very well written. But with this kind of plot- I can't expect a happy ending no matter how it ends.
"My Sister's Keeper" is about a family struggling with a child who is dying from leukemia and kidney failure. Her parents are Brian, a firefighter, and Sara, a stay at home mom. There's Jesse, the oldest son and pretty much the invisible child, and Kate, the daughter who became ill with leukemia when she was very young. Her parents made the decision to have a "designer baby" in the hopes that this unborn child would be a medical match for Kate. The baby, a girl named Anna, would be capable of donating bone marrow, a kidney, even core blood from birth. The birth of Anna was a media sensation and when Anna turns thirteen she decides to seek medical emancipation. Her sister Kate needs a kidney transplant to survive and their mother has once again asked Anna to undergo a medical procedure to save her sister. Anna's sudden desire to be emancipated also becomes a media circus. Anna seeks out a lawyer,  Campbell and is assigned an advocate, Julia. There is a past relationship between Campbell and Julia.
The juice of the novel is the way the family must deal with Anna's decision. There are subplots- Jesse's struggle to get noticed, the marriage of Brian and Sara, the relationship of Campbell and Julia, and most importantly, the relationship between sisters.
Halfway through this book- I hated the mom Sara. But I found myself asking, "If I were in this situation, what would I do?" That's what made reading this such a struggle. "What if's and what would I do's?"
I think the medical jargon bogged this story down. I think the story of Jesse was a distraction that got lost in the details and was never fully developed. There really was no good conclusion to Jesse's story. The Campbell-Julia plot was also a distraction but a least there was a resolution. What's the main event? Does Anna become emancipated or is she forced to donate a kidney to her dying sister? The story moves along like a slow train gaining speed and then ...BAM. The last forty pages the turn of events and sudden plot twists and unexpected turns literally left me stunned. Boy, I didn't see any of that coming. All of those sub plots were really just great, big distractions for the big "Bam" moments.
As a sister , I thought I would become very immersed in this novel. But then I realized two things. I can't relate at all to the sister part of this novel because I can't ever imagine a world without my sisters. I won't even try. Secondly, I related more to the parents. Picoult is writing about every parent's worst nightmare. The made this novel difficult to read and hard to inhale while reading. Faced with the choices that must be made by each daughter and themselves, how can there be a happy ending? One daughter must sacrifice for the other to live. No, I did not just issue a spoiler. Trust me, you have no idea how this is going to play out.
Read it: No-too bleak.
But: No butts. Go to your happy place and read a Janet Evanovich book!
Bonus: There is a movie based on the book starring Cameron Diaz.

P. S. I finished this book at midnight and was so wound up by the ending that I couldn't wait until tomorrow to review it!