Inguling

“It's about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone. A girl who may not know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out.” - My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper is the story of the Fitzgerald family, Brian and Sarah and their three children. Kate, who suffers from leukemia, Jesse who's a pyromaniac and Anna who was conceived to save Kate's life. The story starts shortly before Anna goes to meet with a lawyer, Campbell Alexander, to obtain medical emancipation from her parents because she doesn't want to donate a kidney to her sister after having been in and out of hospital all her life donating organs for Kate. Campbell takes her case on and the result sends the Fitzgerald family into turmoil. Sarah is furious with her daughter, Brian questions again wether they did the right thing, constantly asking things of Anna.

“Do you know how sometimes - when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs - you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly?” - My Sister's Keeper

The story is told from the point of view of Anna, Kate, Jesse, Brian, Sarah, Campbell and Anna's guardian ad litem, Julia. While I initially liked the flashbacks in the story that served to tell the backstory of Sarah and Brian's anguish of discovering their daughter was ill and how they came to have Anna it grew annoying. At some point during the second half of the novel they started to drive me crazy. The book would be in the middle of a present day scenario or conversation that you wanted to know the end of when the chapter cuts to a random flashback. It was just too much.

“Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.” - My Sister's Keeper

What I liked most about this book was Anna and her story, a young girl with an enormous responsibility trying to figure out who she is if she stops doing what she was essentially born to be. I also loved Campbell Alexander, hiding a secret, and continuously joking when people ask him why he has a service dog when he's not blind. His quips of "I'm a recovering alcoholic. The dog gets between me and a beer." or “He’s a chick magnet” were a welcome laugh in this otherwise sad story.

I really wanted to love this book. I liked the idea of exploring the issue of savior siblings and telling the story from many points of view was a great way to do that. However, this book ultimately disappointed me and that's why I think it has taken me so long to write a review, I really had to think how it had disappointed me. I can't say how or why because I'd spoil the ending for anyone who wants to read it but for the first time in my life I actually find myself liking the movie adaptation better, mainly because of a different course of events. Ultimately the ending led me to drop a star, instead of four I'm only willing to give it three.