3.5.

All These Lives was surprising, in a really good way. Cancer stories feel manipulative to me, but this one worked because it was much less about Jena's cancer and much more about Dani -- Jena's twin sister -- dealing with being the girl who is very much alive and very much not sick. Dani's not the easiest character to read because she's sarcastic and she's not exactly pleasant, but she's easy to sympathize with.

I appreciated how at times it wasn't crystal clear what Dani was thinking. She dealt with things by doing, as a way to distract herself from her own thoughts. (view spoiler)[ Each of her attempts to end her life to save her sister's really got at me. Her pain felt realistic without coming across as over-the-top or too heavy. (hide spoiler)] The other thing I really appreciated was that the illness wasn't drawn out and it wasn't made painful for the reader. (view spoiler)[ The fact no one dies in the end was refreshing and I really loved this: "Most people think the biggest sacrifice, the greatest act of love you can give is to die for someone. And probably it is. But sometimes it is the opposite. The biggest thing you can do for someone is to live." (hide spoiler)]. This was a book about living and not dying, and that's what Dani learns about herself and what she learns about Jena. I appreciated the ending so much because Dani figures this out in two waves -- first about herself, then about her sister -- and it's the way she should learn the lesson, since she'd been living the other way around.

Wylie's writing is literary without trying too hard, and the pacing is solid. I think the fact this story isn't steeped heavily in the illness, in the sadness and the obsession over cancer and the implications of the word/implications of the reality of that diagnosis, made the writing and pacing work. Wylie successfully writes a story where illness plays a role, rather than writing an illness, where a story plays a role. It's a big distinction, and it's what sets stories meant to make you cry because of what they deal with apart from stories that make you cry because of how they deal with it.

Full review here: http://www.stackedbooks.org/2012/05/a...