Things break all the time. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Promises break. Hearts break. Every expectant parent will tell you that they don’t want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they’d been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of “luckier” … bills, the pitying stares of “luckier” parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it’s all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She’s smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.
Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow’s illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?
Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, Handle with Care brings us into the heart of a family bound by an incredible burden, a desperate will to keep their ties from breaking, and, ultimately, a powerful capacity for love. Written with the grace and wisdom she’s become famous for, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult offers us an unforgettable novel about the fragility of life and the lengths we will go to protect it.more
This is my absolute favorite book!
I only read this book 2 days out of the couple of the weeks that it took to finish it, but my job prevented me from finishing it in a timely fashion.
I was relatively sure that this was going to be a 3 or 4 star book until the last 100 pages. It just starts to drag entirely too much, to the point where I didn’t care about the characters, the lawsuit or the ending.
This offering from Picoult was slow going. There were multiple point of views, all written in the form of a letter or such to Willow. There were unnecessary POVs, along with their back stories and struggles. Some so in depth, that they could have been a stand alone book.
I disliked the writing style of talking to Willow as it handicapped the storytelling as well as having a TMI feel to it. I’m sure a kid doesn’t wanna hear about her parents doing it, dad’s jeans puddled at his ankles, etc.
I was interested in reading about OI and better understanding it as I trust Picoult and her research. I thought that the author had a decently plotted tale but weighted it down with excess subplots.
The ending didn’t feel natural, almost as if the writer was forcing an unhappily ever after.