My Sister’s Kepper – Jodi Picoult

Review by Alison

Meet the Fitzgerald family. There is Brian – father/fire fighter, Sara – Mum/ex-lawyer and their children Kate, Jesse and Anna.
Kate was diagnosed with “APL … a subgroup of myeloid leukemia. The rate of survival … is twenty to thirty percent, if treatment starts immediately.” at 2 years of age.

5 years pass and the treatment is not enough as the cancer spreads.
Kate needs a bone marrow transfer or she will die.

Brian and Sara come to the decision to have another child to hope that it will be a match. They have Jesse and he is not a match. They try again and their third child, Anna, is a match.

For many years, Anna has been there for Kate as a loving sister and a donor. Every time Kate goes in for treatment, Anna is the one giving.

All this changes with the discovery that  Kate needs a kidney.

Anna has known all along her role in the family without being told. She is there for Kate. Her thinking starts to change when she looks into the risks of Kidney transplants and decides she cannot do it. Her mother Sara cannot see the issue and pushes Anna.

The only thing Anna feels she can do is sue her parents for the right to make her own medical decisions.

The movie was OK, the book has a different, more intense ending.

This is the only book I have read, that has made me cry. It is fast paced with the ups and downs of a roller-coaster ride. It really pushes the boundaries of medical and moral dilemmas.

To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Review by Alison

This is a novel I can come back to time and time again. A timeless classic, possibly the only book from school that I wanted to read again!

This novel is a snap shot in the life of Scout, an 8 year old girl living in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s.
Scout and her brother Jem are inseparable play mates who are very inquisitive with very vivid imaginations. They both live with their father Atticus, who is a lawyer.
Things start to heat up in this sleepy town as topics such as racism, oppression and injustice raise their ugly heads in the courtroom.

Lee has done a fantastic job of writing events through a child’s eyes. It enables the reader to follow in simplicity and not get over burdened with the heaviness of pre-civil war America.
It is like taking a step back and stripping it down, seeing it, as it really is. Honest and innocent.

Great movie adaptation too!

Stephen King – Under The Dome

Review by Alison

This novel is set in a quiet town named Chester’s Mill in Maine. A place where everybody knows everyone and what they do. The kind of place you know your kids are safe and your biggest worry is the next bake sale.

That is, until a dome lands and isolates the whole town. There is no way in and no way out.

As the dome situation starts to sink in to the townspeople, after some horrific deaths and a couple of plane crashes, a few members of the community start to show their true colours. Big personalities, secret keeping psychopaths and an Iraq vet make for an interesting mix, with some going as far as murder to try and gain control.

Time is running out for the people of Chester’s Mill. How long can they last with dwindling supplies and townspeople turning against each other?

Take that van!

I am a massive King fan, I just can’t get enough of his amazing writing! This novel did not disappoint. It is a very big read at over 1,000 pages however, it is in those pages that King’s descriptive tale comes to life. Well worth reading for the ending surprise!

Love Junkie – Rachel Resnick

Review by Alison

” a memoir of love and sex addiction”.

Love Junkie was a crazy roller coaster ride with Rachel taking you to the lowest dip. Through the ups and downs are accounts of her insane relationships with her multiple lovers and her mother, who was also a “love junkie”  and an alcoholic, using men to try and heal wounds with Rachel as a young girl and her brother, a toddler, raising themselves.

Shit just got real.

Rachel is a “love junkie” for many years and many relationships. Finally as she grows she starts to think, “Why am I like this?” and decides to find out.

I was so proud of her at this point. I felt like I had just been through this traumatizing journey and there was light at the end of the tunnel.

I did feel frustrated at some points, as you I could see the same pattern emerging in all her relationships. I just wanted to yell at her, “Stop! Look behind you!”,  just as I would to the TV in a horror film. Still, It is the most eye-opening novel I have read.  I could not put it down.

One brave chick.