Book Review: My Sister's Keeper

I recently finished reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I was loaned this book by my good friend, Jenn, a while ago. I was apprehensive to read it knowing that it would most likely be a sad story. For some reason, I like books that are uplifting and happy. Probably because I wish the world was like that, but that's another story! Anyway, I was apprehensive about reading this book but I was getting down to the bottom of the pile of books I had to read while pumping at work so I decided to read it. And, I'm so glad I did! I really enjoyed the book.

If you don't already know, this book is about a family who finds out their young daughter has cancer. They decide to have another baby, one that is scientifically chosen in order to have matching characteristics to donate blood to the sister. As you can imagine, as the siblings grow up and the older sister's cancer worsens, this dynamic causes more and more problems. Eventually the younger sister hires a lawyer to medically emancipate herself from her parents, meaning she doesn't want to be a donor for her sister's treatment anymore, which would cause her sister to lose her battle with cancer.

The premise of the book is very interesting in itself, but I really enjoyed the characters just as much. Picoult really intertwines all her characters in such interesting ways throughout the story. The way the book is written is really interesting as well. Each chapter is written from one of the character's perspectives. Some of the chapters have several timelines in them as well. At first, it was surprising to me to read a book written this way but I got used to it. It wasn't my favorite way to read a book but after I got used the writing style, it didn't distract too much from the story.

I really enjoyed this book. The plot was very interesting, full of twists and turns, suspenseful moments, secrets, emotional moments. The characters were all really deep, each having conflicting sides to themselves as well as interacting with the other characters in the story. The one thing I didn't particularly like about the book was the ending. It was pretty shocking and sort of just dropped off. Although, maybe I was just wishing for the happy ending I like, but I didn't really care for the way she ended the book. I also really didn't care for the epilogue. I thought it felt totally unnatural and went against a lot of the character development she had done throughout the entire book up until that point.

Even though I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, I really did enjoy reading this book. I would recommend it to anyone. It was sad at times, but also happy. The made this one into a movie as well so I'll have to put it on my list of movies to watch also.