Reviews with content warning for Grief - My Sister's Keeper

A little long, a little predictable (yes, even the ending), but overall a good read. It definitely raises a lot of good and difficult questions, even 20 years after it’s original publication. The author does a fantastic job of capturing what it’s like to love you family but still want to do what’s right for you - all the conflicting emotions but still feeling the burning love for the people around you. I would have given 4 stars, but I think there was some extra “stuff” that could have been excluded

like the love story between Campbell and Julia and all their history…

but it didn’t totally distract from the main story, so I guess it’s kind of a wash. Just there to make the book longer imo.

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jenn_reads's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Every adult in this book is awful and Sara can go straight to hell.

The end is monstrously stupid. It's like M. Night Shyamalan for middle aged white ladies. The ending definite affects my assessment of this whole entire book.

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xoxandiexo's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

this was unnecessarily painful. i hate the ending with all my heart and i want to punch the wall until my knuckles bleed. merry christmas!

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seawarrior's review against another edition

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2.0

The primary issue that I have with this book is its melodrama. Picoult seemed very deliberate in including plot points and phrases that heightened the emotional drama and distress that the characters were experiencing. By the final pages of the book, this was painful to the point of irritation.

I also felt that Picoult shied away from fully exploring the situation Anna was in. By making her subservient to her parents and a willing participant in the surgeries she was born to endure, Picoult never has to stare down the true horror of Anna's life.

Though she's granted medical emancipation, we later realize that even this decision was made to help Kate, negating any hurt or resentment between the family members. Anna's death serves this purpose even further. Though her family grieves her, she had a slim realm of identity and personality outside of providing for Kate, so in a way she exists as she always has.

I think this book did a disservice to its own mission by relying on plot twists that eventual solved the ethical and familial ramifications of Anna's fight for the rights to her own body.

Unfortunately I did not feel that the additional protagonists were written well either. It felt to me that Picoult stretched herself too thin, and managed to create characters who represented problems that needed to be solved within her narrative, but not much more. Though each character had different perspectives, most noticeably defined by their fields of study or past life experiences, their voices were not dissimilar and I didn't think they possessed the true complexity of human beings. I will say that Picoult's story was engaging, and seemed to have been researched well; yet I am not an expert in medicine, law, astronomy, fire science or any other topics Picoult needed factual support to make a part of her story. I would recommend this book to others who are interested in children's rights in the medical field, although do not expect the book to be too revolutionary, as I did. Instead it provides a starter for questioning the way we undermine children's consent in medicine, and ends with vague assertions that are ultimately meaningless for Anna.

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ansfaiv's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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shushkeepitdown's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

An extremely sad book which tackles all the horrible things that a family has to go through when one of their loved ones is with an illness with no certain cure. I honestly loved the beginning and even almost near the end it was so good but then the ending came and honestly I was very disappointed with it. Also there are multiple POVs and I wouldn't have minded it but what they do is during the book they constantly switch between present time and their past memories so I had to constantly read paragraphs over and over to make sure what was currently going on and what was a random memory they just put in the middle. They do this for every point of view. It was a good starting book but the ending honestly stopped this from being a 4.5 star book for me.

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lulunyx's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Gut-wrenching, emotional and a beautiful exploration of an impossible situation. Not a full five stars because I am still bitter and sobbing over the ending (even if the author note explains it, still felt like a cop out that was emotionally devastating).

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