Cody's Bookshelf

Jodi Picoult has a talent for making her readers consider, and reconsider, issues they’ve never thought much of before. At the center of this, perhaps her most famous novel, is medical emancipation: a thirteen-year-old girl wants to have control of her own body; she doesn’t want to leave decisions up to her parents.

Anna’s older sister, Kate, has fought Cancer since the age of two. She is doing badly, nearly dead, when Anna has had enough and consults a lawyer about filing a petition to emancipate herself. She’s had to donate body organs to her sister time and time again, from birth, with no say.

This book is competently written, but I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as I expected to. The first half dragged; Julia and Campbell’s relationship seems forced; the ending is tragedy porn. The topic at the novel’s center is intriguing, as is always the case with Picoult . . . This one just didn’t entirely get off the ground, for me. I found myself indifferent to the plight of this family. I never felt I was in their heads.

I can recommend this to fans of Picoult, but no one else.