My Sister's Keeper

There are two kinds of good books. The ones that are very enjoyable to read but once you put them down, sooner or later, you forget about them. Then there are ones that you don't. They stay with you forever and change you and the way you look at life itself. My Sister's Keeper was one of those books. Since I read this book, it has been my benchmark book, my litmus test, if you will. Every time I finish a new book, I compare it to this and wonder how it fared. And for now only one book managed to be in the same level as this. And even that didn't make me cry half as much as this. No book ever did.

The book has everything you'd want in a book. It has really beautiful prose. The author talks about everyday things such as stars and fire and makes them seem so beautiful, it makes me wonder if we both are seeing the same thing. The story is touching and heartbreaking but it leaves a glimmer of hope. A person who manages to read this book without crying seriously needs to be awarded a Nobel Prize. And the characters have a depth unlike any other. Anna was undoubtedly my favourite followed closely by Jesse. I actually had to stop reading because my eyes were so blurry at the part where Anna is thinking about her funeral and how it will be so much different from Kate's. And even though I haven't talked about them a lot, Campbell and Julia's story was very interesting. One of the many reasons, this story is so close to my heart was because I fell in love with Anna almost in the start of the book, when Brian says:

“...Anna is our family's constant. Anna comes in with a smile. Anna tells us about the robin she found with the broken wing and a blush on its cheek; or about the mother she saw at Wal-Mart with not one but two sets of twins. Anna gives us a backbeat, and seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realise that silence has a sound.”

And if that quote alone doesn't make you read this book, I don't know what will. Sure, the book's ending is going to rip your heart out,stomp on it with spiky shoes and then pass it though a shredder but it is still worth it,if you ask me.