My Sister's Keeper

Right now I’m about halfway through reading My Sister’s Keeper. I have already seen the movie but my friends spoiled it for me and told me that the movie’s ending is much different than the books ending. They didn’t stop here though; they told me exactly how they were different. I personally think that the ending to the movie is better than the book ending because it is a lot more realistic which is what I like. So if you haven’t read this book yet and you plan on reading it here is your spoiler alert: I suggest not reading any farther than this sentence. So in the book the ending happens like this: Anna ends up dying in a car crash and her sister Kate survives. Confused? You will be if you haven’t read the book yet. You see, Kate basically has terminal leukemia. When her parents find this out, they decided to have a baby so that Kate will have a donor. This isn’t done naturally though; it’s done using this high tec stuff I don’t really want to get into in this blog post. Basically, Anna spends her entire life in the hospital just as Kate does, even though she is not sick. Anna then decides that she wants to sue her parents for the right to her own body. At least that is what the reader thinks. Later we discover that Kate wants to die, she is tired of fighting the disease and just wants to go to heaven. This is why she asks her sister Anna to help her but not allowing her kidney to be donated. Long story short, in the movie Kate dies in the end. It is still a happy ending though because I felt that the family was at peace. They did everything they could to save their daughter even though it wasn’t good enough. You have to see the movie to understand though because I know that the last few sentences made very little sense from a parent’s point of view.

I think this book is really good and that every girl should make an effort to read it (Guys can too, but it’s kind of a chic book). It made me realize that the hardships I was going through in life weren’t really that bad and that it could be a whole lot worse. I could have some sort of terminal cancer or a disease that wouldn’t allow me to live my life the way I do today. Although it was a sad movie and I walked out of the theater crying, I feel that I also left the theater a different person because the movie (and the book for that matter) touched me so much. I don’t take setbacks in my life as hard now as I used to, I use the setbacks as stepping stones to move forward. For example, I used to freak out when I would fail a test or forget to turn in an assignment. Now, I just take it as a means to know I need to work harder the next time. In the end, that one little test or assignment won’t have that much effect on my life as a whole.

This is a link to an excerpt of the book.