I liked this better than My Sister's Keeper as a whole, although I have some of the same complaints about it. This author is a master of making you believe in a story that makes exactly no sense and making you care about characters who behave like retards. If I thought about any of it for very long, it was all mind-numbingly stupid. But I have to admit that the story is engrossing and satisfying in the end.
PS--this is not a book for the bashful; there's a lot of sex in it, of the awkward teenage variety and also of the middle-aged parents variety. Also of the getting-molested-in-a- McDonalds-bathroom variety (hey, we've all been there). Perhaps this only stuck out to me because I was listening to the audiobook and the guy narrating it sounded like a gay Casey Kasem (redundant?), and this is not the type of person that you want to hear narrating a sex scene every 5 minutes and saying things like "Oh, yes, give it to me." You also have to wonder what's up with all the sex in a book about suicide. Call me a Puritan, but ew. So why am I giving this 4 stars? That's why Jodi Picoult is a gazillionaire and I am not. She has magical powers, like a Jedi.
PPS to English teachers--carefully note the blatant thievery of the foreshadowing scene in Of Mice and Men where Candy can't kill his dog. Steinbeck is rolling over in his grave.