Shannon H. (USA: MA) (2009/06/20):
I am currently reading this and am thus far finding it to be very interesting and well written. Just a note, I'll send it out as soon as I get a chance once I'm finished reading.
Stephen (USA: MD) (2012/09/03):
Anna is a bright 13 year year old who was a designer baby, genetically engineered to be a perfect tissue match for her older sister, Kate, who suffers from a rare form of Leukemia. From the moment she was born, Anna's been helping to keep her sister alive and though she loves her sister, she's had enough. She now wants to sue her parents to establish her medical emancipation and her rights to her own body. She wants to refuse donating a kidney that will certainly impact her life negatively and result in her sister having yet another operation that is as likely to shorten her sister's life as it is to save it. There was a time when I was drawn to tear-jerkers and while I'm past that stage, this book does fall into that category somewhat, but it has a different overall feel than that. This is a flawed book but it does raise some important issues that people should be thinking about and it does it in the framework of a family where each of the family members is at times loveable and at times hateful. In fact, my main criticism of this book is that it's too like life... We expect fiction to be believable to some degree but to be missing some of the random detail of real life. Aspects of this book bothered me in that regard. The story of a family dealing with a life threatening condition never melded comfortably in my mind with the story of the attorney and his lost love. I kept looking for more detail about the attorney's family life to shed some new light on the issues surrounding Anna's family but that never seemed to come together for me. And while I'm used to books raising issues that are too complicated for any pat solutions, I did expect and wanted a more satisfying resolution than this book delivered. This book is worth the time to read it and it touches on some important issues. However it isn't the masterpiece it might have been if it lived up to the promise of the issues that it raised.
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