Book Club: My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

I found this book to be slow in the beginning. It was hard to keep up with the 'when' of the writing as it kept flipping back and forth.

Ultimately I really enjoyed this book (besides the two previous objections to it). It is a great fiction novel that talks about some of the issues that can be involved in stem cell research. That's why I picked this book up...but it's so much more. It's about what makes or doesn't make a good parent, about making hard decisions and about being a si...more "As found on GoodReads.com, here is my initial review of the Book Club book:

I found this book to be slow in the beginning. It was hard to keep up with the 'when' of the writing as it kept flipping back and forth.

Ultimately I really enjoyed this book (besides the two previous objections to it). It is a great fiction novel that talks about some of the issues that can be involved in stem cell research. That's why I picked this book up...but it's so much more. It's about what makes or doesn't make a good parent, about making hard decisions and about being a sister or sibling in general. It's about dealing with life and death.

I highly recommend this book - you might have to give it some time to get into it - by the time you reach the end you will be so glad you read it! (and you might cry - I did)."

I'd like to add on to this review just a bit.

I couldn't understand the mother's actions throughout the book until the very end. I couldn't understand why a mother would put the needs of one child ahead of the others. How she could disregard her other 2 children and only focus on one. But in the end when she said that she did it because she wanted all of her children...I started to understand. It's easy to sit on the outside of this book and judge her for the decisions she made and the sacrifices she forced her children to make but I can't even begin to imagine being in that situation and faced with those decisions. Would I make the same mistakes? Would it seem that I loved one more than the others? I don't know.

I loved the surprise ending...I did not see it coming at all but I think it wrapped the book up nicely by making it even more heartbreaking.

So what do you think? Should we as a society accept the inevitability of designer children or is that just wrong? What are your thoughts on the mother? If you were Ana, would you have done the same thing? Do you think of your children any differently now or consider these questions as an eye-opener?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the book...I hope you liked it.

(I don't know why it's underlining everything and I don't care so get over it! :)