What makes books like these particularly painful is that at its heart, it's a fascinating topic. Donor rights, children's medical rights, how long and how much a family should have to sacrifice to keep a family member alive... these are compelling and important issues to discuss.

The problem is that Picoult's writing isn't nearly deft enough to handle the topic gracefully. 'My Sister's Keeper' relentlessly meanders, weaving between pointless POV shifts and unnecessary flashbacks. While the witty dialogue itself is one of the bright spots, the voices of all the characters -- young or old, educated or not -- sound virtually identical. The romance between Campbell and Julia is bland and irrelevant, and the choice to make Sara unsympathetic to the point of being monstrous is baffling, considering that she's carrying most of the emotional clout in a highly moral-driven story.

Most irritating of all is that Picoult makes a pretense of bravely tackling a controversial topic (the moral implications of forcing your child to be a donor, and the question of whether or not the donor should want to sacrifice everything to save a family member) and then ultimately refuses to take a stand either way, using several unforgivable cop-outs to avoid answering her own questions.

As far as keeping the hands of everyone involved blood-free and introducing an interesting topic, Picoult succeeds. As a fellow writer and reviewer, however, I was disappointed in her willingness to string the reader along for an entire book --a book whose greatest strength is the overarching moral dilemma -- and then rob them of any sort of believable or compelling conclusion.