Handle With Care - Jodi Picoult

If you have read any of my previous postings about Jodi Picoult books you will know I have a love/hate relationship with her novels. This one was no exception really. The only thing that was different was that I didn't really go "what?!?!?!" until the very end of the book. In her others this usually happened about the middle,

Handle With Care is another controversial novel. It is about a young girl named Willow who has osteogenesis imperfecta - a very severe form of brittle bone disease. Her mother Charlotte decides to sue the obstetrician (her best friend) in a wrongful birth suit because she thinks she could have noticed the disease earlier on in Charlotte's pregnancy. And then Charlotte would have had had the choice to terminate the pregnancy. Charlotte believes she is doing this for her daughter to have a better life - Willow's disease has cost the family a lot of money and Charlotte believes the money they will get from the lawsuit will give Willow a chance to have all the things she needs. But Charlotte must be willing to say that she might never have had WIllow if she could have chose. And it also could destroy her other daughter and her marriage.

This book to me is not about abortion or a woman' right to choose. To me it was about the sacrifices people make for the ones they love and the lengths they will go to create oppurtunities for them. Charlotte was willing to ruin her own life to helm make Willow's more comfortable. Its amazing to me how Charlotte's character was able to cope so well with her community and family against her thinking she was an unfit mother and just money hungry. I really loved the relationship between Charlotte and Sean. They both had such strong convictions and really had to look at their marriage and whether or not they were worth saving after all they had been through.

I actually really enjoyed this book. I thought it was well written and it was a book that I didn't want to put down. It was horrifying reading about all the breaks that Willow had went through - especially the ones she had when she was a baby. Maybe because I am getting to the age where I am thinking about children but this book made me realize how lucky I was to be born healthy and how hard it must be for parents of children who were born with disabilities. It scares me to think of all the complications are possible when having baby. I have been lucky that almost all of my friends and family have been born healthy.

I am reading this book for my Facebook Book Club Babes In Toyland and am really excited to discuss this with the other women in the group. It is a great book for discussion - but it has the potential to get really heated!

Rating - 4