Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

23 reviews

lupitaestela's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.75


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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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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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niiici's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0


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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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childoflokii's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25


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belfrybatz's review against another edition

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challenging sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

It was very slow, and the characters particularly the mom were extremely unlikeable 
/flawed but not in a good way. The ending shocked me and made me sad, but came way too late to make me interested in the plot.

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darkpoet's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

This book was amazing and I have so many thought and opinions on all these characters that I now hold dear to my heart. The only reason I did not give it five stars was because of the ending.
I extremely disliked that in the end Anna did this because Kate wanted to die. I wish that Anna did do the selfish thing by wanting her own life. You first see her character as someone who wants to not have the only purpose of her life be used as Kates donor but towards the end we see that she made the choice because of Kate and not herself. Anna and Jesse were pushed aside as children and were extremely neglected and I thought that it was refreshing to finally see a story where someone isn’t willing to throw their life away for someone whose dying. (Not to say that i don’t feel bad for cancer patients) In the end all the growth that I had thought Anna went through was pointless because in the end she wasn’t given the choice she had to pick what was best for Kate. I wanted Anna to finally be ready to love her family but also know that when she gets older she will leave and not come back because of the circumstances. I also didn’t like how they went though the whole conflict of Anna finding her own worth just for it all to come back to Kate. I feel like this could have a deeper meaning of everyone comes back to the people dying and forgets that everyone is dying and deserves love and attention. This ending I accepted for the time being because I knew Anna would be able to have a life of her own without being linked to Kate. I was stunned though when Anna was in the car accident and pronounced brain dead. It seemed like a definite shock ending but at the same time a easy way to wrap this book up. But what absolutely destroyed me was after this entire thing Anna’s life came down to saving Kates. Anna’s whole purpose became to save Kate and i find that absolutely disgusting. Anna was going to finally have her own life and own purpose and instead she started her life for Kate and ended it for Kate.  Anna was shown through her whole life that her only purpose was to save Kate and instead of her finally breaking through she ends up saving her in the process of herself dying. I cried hard to this book and was touched by it but the ending left me feeling disgusted at Anna’s mom and even Anna’s dad at some points and i wish Anna would’ve gotten to know how special she was without her sister.

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maxreadssometimes's review against another edition

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

4.0


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