Handle With Care

by Jodi Picoult

As you well know, Jodi Picoult is my FAVORITE author of all time. Ever since I read her My Sister's Keeper in 2004, I've been a huge fan. Her new book is quite interesting, if not a little predictable. While I seriously enjoyed reading the novel, I couldn't help but wonder if I had read the book before. It seemed to follow the story line of My Sister's Keeper a little to closely. The characters were different and the challenges were unique, but the overall theme seemed copied. The main character's daughter has an illness, the family gets torn apart, the father moves out and nobody seems to understand the mother's point of view. It is eerily similar to her previous novel.
In this new novel, the main character is the mother of a five-year-old with brittle bone disease. The daughter is constantly in and out of hospitals and is now on a medication that the insurance company won't cover. Forced to deal with mounting bills and more in the future, the mother makes the decision to sue her pediatrician for "wrongful birth." That means, if she had known about her daughter's condition while she was pregnant, she would've had an abortion. This strikes her husband as evil saying it means she wishes her daughter had never been born. It also puts a wedge in between the mother and her best friend, who happened to be her obstetrician. While the reason behind the trial is money to secure her daughter's future, the main character wonders at what cost will she protect her daughter?


Similar Novel: My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Length: 496 pages
Copyright: March 2009