My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Read For: Leisure
Rating: 3

It has been awhile since I read this and updated this blog (student teaching kept me busy), so i will try my best to remember my thoughts after reading My Sister's Keeper.

I had been wanting to read a Jodi Picoult novel for some time, because I knew that she was a popular author. When I found this book on sale at Borders for $3.99, I saw my chance! The basic premise of the book is that Anna was borne simply to keep her sister, who suffers from a particularly deadly strain of cancer, alive. For her entire life Anna has been donating tissue, blood, kidneys, you name it, to her sister. She has decided that she is sick of doing this and decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body, effectively emancipating herself from her parents and also killing her sister. Each chapter in the story is told from a different character's point of view: Anna, her mom, her brother, her father, the lawyer representing Anna, the legal guardian appointed to advise Anna thoughout the process, etc.

Picoult's story is well crafted (although I have to say that Anna's mother was one of the most annoying characters I have ever read) and the writing decent, but nothing really stood out to me. Rather, I think that Picoult strays into mediocrity by being pretty much the same as other contemporary authors because a lot of the characters were stereotypical, the plot "twist" at the end was predictable, the references to sexual tension were casual. All in all it was a good read and I can now say that I have read a Jodi Picoult novel and understand her hold over the masses.