HANDLE WITH CARE.

HANDLE WITH CARE by JODI PICOULT.

BACK COVER BLURB: Willow O'Keefe had seven broken bones before she took her first breath.

Now her life is lived on a knife-edge. Born with brittle bone disease, she will never learn to skate like her sister. Even walking can be dangerous: one wrong step and she is back in a cast.

The medical bills are crippling her family. So when a lawyer tells Charlotte, her mother, that they might have a case to sue for wrongful birth, she feels bound to consider it.

Except that winning would mean losing her best friend - and telling the world that she wishes her much-longed-for, adored daughter had never been born ...

FIRST SENTENCE{Prologue: Charlotte, February 14, 2002}: Things break all the time.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 137}: Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I can't help but do something inappropriate. It's breath is full of lies, it smells of spite. And just at this moment, it chose to rear its ugly head.

SOURCE: A charity shop buy.

MY THOUGHTS: Formulaic as I've come to expect of Ms Picoult's books. I guess the key (or one of them at least) as to whether or not/how much you enjoy this authors books lies in whether or not/how much you have an interest in the issue(s) at the heart of the story. And with its issues of disability I was bound to enjoy Handle With Care, right?

You'd have thought so, wouldn't you? And up to a point you'd have been correct. I tend to enjoy Jodi's books and had more than a passing interest in the issues but I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if it weren't for ...

• Mother, Charlotte and youngest daughter, Willow. Now whilst I've come to accept as a matter of fact that the chances are I won't like the mother figure at the heart of these books I was surprised at how little I cared for Willow. Of course I empathised with her BUT I'm afraid I found her character implausible. And more than that I thought how she was portrayed quite frankly nauseating. Something I could rant about ad infinitum but won't except to say that I hated that she was portrayed as so stoic, as so uncomplaining. Physically limited, yes, but when all is said and done an otherwise 'normal' five/six year old with surely all of the tantrums etc that go with being this age. 
• Not that I found Willow the only totally unrealistic character - thinking about it now whilst I didn't exactly like older daughter Amelia she was actually the only characters I found totally believable. Talk about unprofessional, how either of the two lawyers were still practising I'll never know.
• The ludicrousness of certain aspects of the plot and I quote 'Boys the same age were terrorizing the escalators, teaching each other how to ride their wheelchairs up and down them.' What? 
• The inclusion of the recipes. OK so Charlotte had been a pastry chef but I just didn't get the need for the inclusion of recipes. The cynical side of me wondering if this was just a nod towards the 'foodie' books that are so popular at the moment.
• The issues of abortion. Arguably it isn't part of a novel's job to debate the rights and wrongs of these issues but the exploration of such moral dilemmas is one of the things I enjoy most about Jodi's books. Somewhat lacking here I thought the 'debate' disappointingly one-sided. 

Still, all-in-all compulsive reading. If nothing else its always fascinating to compare the health/legal systems of the US and UK.