I can see, I think, what makes Picoult such a popular author. She chooses controversial situations and works her way through some logic, helping readers come to grips with questions that may nag them. Her writing is clear and accessible, and the story manages to hang together, but I felt nothing for the characters by the end. They felt like two-dimensional megaphones for their respective positions, in this case the religious right fights an openly gay couple for cryogenically frozen embryos. The one character that I worried about, a young girl undergoing therapy for depression, is never mentioned at the end, so we never learn her fate. She was a casualty of the story, which is resolved adequately without her. Sing Me Home is not literature, but storytelling, and Picoult does an adequate job.