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graciehaynes's review against another edition
3.0
This book is just under 300 pages but it took a while for me to read. It tried to tackle many polarizing topics (broken families, abortion/teenage pregnancy, and childhood illness) and failed to do some of them justice. It wasn’t a bad book, it just failed to reach it’s full potential.
firewordsparkler's review against another edition
2.0
Spoilers ahead! Proceed with caution!
A very okay book. The voice of the narrator, 16-year-old Dylan, sounded more like that of a twelve-year-old. I wished this book was good. It could have been good, but instead, it goes with the typical tropes of the absent father, the troubling mother, the token ethnic girl (probably), the exotic name (of said token ethnic girl), the pregnant teenager, the bad-boy love interest, the child with cancer, the list goes on. The similes Stevenson uses were very clumsy, and despite the story being interesting, the language was too young for it to be believably a sixteen-year-old's.
Not to mention that Dylan wasn't even very likeable as a character. She came off as overly whiny for the first few chapters, and then was continuously and annoyingly self-deprecating. She kept going on about how much she missed her best friend Kate because she had a boyfriend and how she had zero good attributes to warrant a boyfriend and-the worst of it-how she kept reminiscing about her middle school days when she and Kate would make fun of all those girls who had boyfriend and wore makeup.
Plus, she had random attributes that had nothing to do with the plot or subplot, like her being obsessed with the environment. While in a better-written book this could have been used to show her compassion which could have foreshadowed her decision to give the bone marrow, it was just random and clumsy in the book. Clumsy in the sense that there was, near the end of the book, an oil spill occurring on TV that makes her feel bad but is not heard of outside of this scene. And I will never, for the life of me, understand why she decided to include the topic of abortion and pregnant teenagers. It was completely irrelevant, as were Dylan's opinions on it, which conflicted directly with her reasoning for wanting to give the marrow to a little girl she barely knew.
But the book wasn't totally irredeemable. It had its nice family moments and Dylan's little sister Karma was a great character in a not-so-great novel. She was a good foil for the main character, mostly maintaining a good attitude about things, and a fun little sister. She seemed like the most complexly written character in the book. The mother was also written fairly well, although we get no explanations about what and why she did what she did. She was a weak character, but she did have her strong and maternal moments when she would help Dylan, or at least try to. Plus, the book ended on a nice note.
A very okay book. The voice of the narrator, 16-year-old Dylan, sounded more like that of a twelve-year-old. I wished this book was good. It could have been good, but instead, it goes with the typical tropes of the absent father, the troubling mother, the token ethnic girl (probably), the exotic name (of said token ethnic girl), the pregnant teenager, the bad-boy love interest, the child with cancer, the list goes on. The similes Stevenson uses were very clumsy, and despite the story being interesting, the language was too young for it to be believably a sixteen-year-old's.
Not to mention that Dylan wasn't even very likeable as a character. She came off as overly whiny for the first few chapters, and then was continuously and annoyingly self-deprecating. She kept going on about how much she missed her best friend Kate because she had a boyfriend and how she had zero good attributes to warrant a boyfriend and-the worst of it-how she kept reminiscing about her middle school days when she and Kate would make fun of all those girls who had boyfriend and wore makeup.
Plus, she had random attributes that had nothing to do with the plot or subplot, like her being obsessed with the environment. While in a better-written book this could have been used to show her compassion which could have foreshadowed her decision to give the bone marrow, it was just random and clumsy in the book. Clumsy in the sense that there was, near the end of the book, an oil spill occurring on TV that makes her feel bad but is not heard of outside of this scene. And I will never, for the life of me, understand why she decided to include the topic of abortion and pregnant teenagers. It was completely irrelevant, as were Dylan's opinions on it, which conflicted directly with her reasoning for wanting to give the marrow to a little girl she barely knew.
But the book wasn't totally irredeemable. It had its nice family moments and Dylan's little sister Karma was a great character in a not-so-great novel. She was a good foil for the main character, mostly maintaining a good attitude about things, and a fun little sister. She seemed like the most complexly written character in the book. The mother was also written fairly well, although we get no explanations about what and why she did what she did. She was a weak character, but she did have her strong and maternal moments when she would help Dylan, or at least try to. Plus, the book ended on a nice note.
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