*reviewer note: I discuss in some detail my issues with this novel, although I do not give away any relevant events that transpire in the novel.*

Anna was born to save her sister. She was created as a perfect genetic match in order to become a perfect donor match for her sister, Kate, who has been battling leukemia since nearly infancy. Anna is now 13, and after several proceedures and operations for donation to her sister and a kidney donation for her sister now on the horizon, she is tired of feeling like she has no choice in any medical decisions that affect her. She has decided to sue her parents for medical emancipation in order to gain control over what happens to her body. What comes next threatens to tear her family apart.

My Sister's Keeper was not afraid to investigate moral and ethical issues that arise from continuing science and medical research. The way the novel handled the difference between ethics and morality was its strength.

Unfortunately, there were too many detractions for me that led to my disappointment rather than my enjoyment of the novel.

First, I felt that the strong language the novel was peppered with was completely unnecessary. I do not buy into the belief that even 13 year old children use such profanity as the author of this novel suggests. There are circumstances that stretch our limits, but the use of profanity is a weak way to demonstrate how severly tried a character is. Instead what came to mind as I read this book is a quote I heard many years ago: 'profanity is a weak mind trying to express itself forcefully'. I do not think that any author wants to think that her words, her work, her novel is weak, but when she uses such language in *all* her characters at one point or another, it only makes her writing come across as feeble.

Second, many of the characters were beautifully written, full of life and feeling, even if I did not like them. The strength of this story is what was concentrated around the events of Anna and her family. Unfortunately, the author widened the story-telling to involve the personal lives of Anna's attorney and the guardian ad litem assigned to her. And coincidentally, these two characters have a past relationship, which the reader is then forced to relive through these character's angsty and self-pitying memories. These characters' flat, cliche, and stereotypical past has no direct bearing on Anna's situation and only serves as a tangent to the main story, a tangent I could have done without.

Finally, the ending was more than a disappointment. Without going into detail, I felt it betrayed the spirit of what this novel was trying to present in regards to the ethical and moral medical decisions that these characters had to make.

This story could have been so much more; it had the potential to be so much more. The concept was original and timely, but the delivery fell short. Not recommended.