by: Jodi Picoult
ISBN: 9780743454537
List Price: $16.00

Anna is only thirteen and yet she already bears the burden of an age upon her shoulders. She's been through numerous surgeries, procedures, hospitals, and doctor's offices, yet Anna is not sick. She was born to be a genetic match for her sister, Kate, who has leukemia. She offers precisely matched blood and bone marrow to her sister in hopes of keeping her well enough to fight the cancer. Anna has performed her duties lovingly for her sister, until this point in time.

Anna is now a teenager and is starting down the path of self-discovery. Yet, how can she ever truly define herself when she is always thought of in relation to her sister. Without Kate, there would not have been an Anna, yet without Anna, there would no longer be a Kate. Anna knows that her actions, whatever they may be, directly affect her sister's livelihood, but she yearns for some meaning in her life that belongs to her.

So, to save her identity from being forever lost in the operating room, Anna does the only thing that she knows to do; demand rights to her own body. She obtains a lawyer by the name of Campbell Alexander to defend her in the lawsuit that she files against her parents. Anna hopes to stop her parents from forcing her to aide Kate and she hopes that Campbell will be the one who can help. Little does she know that he may be the one who needs the real help.

My Thoughts

This book is moving, to say the very least. With so many facets of human emotion displayed so openly in the book, it's hard not to be immediately drawn into the situation. At times, it almost seems as if Kate and Anna are your own sisters or daughters.

On one hand, I side with Anna. It was not fair of her parents to conceive her only to be a body part replacement factory for her sister. She is an individual person who deserves just as much respect and love as her parents afford to her sister. A person, even a young teenager has the right to choose what to do to their body.

But this story is so much more than that; it's about a family torn apart by the strains of illness, a girl whose decisions may cause her sister to lose her life, and above all, the bond that connects sisters together despite what occurs between them.

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