Book Review- Lone Wolf

I just finished reading Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult for a Crazy Book Tours review.

From Goodreads:

A life hanging in the balance…a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family, love, and letting go.

Edward Warren, twenty-four, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: His dad lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara.

With her father’s chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father’s organs. Is he motivated by altruism, or revenge? And to what lengths will his sister go to stop him from making an irrevocable decision?

Lone Wolf explores the notion of family, and the love, protection and strength it’s meant to offer. But what if the hope that should sustain it, is the very thing that pulls it apart? Another tour de force from Jodi Picoult, Lone Wolf examines the wild and lonely terrain upon which love battles reason.

I love reading books by Jodi Picoult.  In fact, when pressed to choose, I often say she is my favorite author.  Her books are always about hot topics that are usually question morals and they make you think and just feel.  And I often find myself tearing up at them.  Oh, and they usually have some great twist at the very end.  (which I've found that I've gotten good at seeing, but not this time!) 

But this book was hard for me to read.  Very hard.  I didn't really read the summary when I signed up, or if I did it was before Christmas and so I didn't remember or pay attention that closely.  But reading it now, it hit close to hom.  The book is about a father on life support with a brain injury and the decision on whether or not to let him go.  Well, on Christmas day, one of my closest friend's mom had a brain aneurysm.  She was fine one minute and they were getting ready for dinner, the next she had a headache and became ill.  They called an ambulance and they just took her to hospital to check her out, thinking everything was fine.  On the way in, she lost consciousness and never woke up.  It hit home so hard.  But everything I read in the book matched up to my friend's mom.  The little twitches where for a second you have hope that the person woke up.  The whole thing about whispering at first in the room, but then realizing that it didn't make a difference.  And the whole organ donor scenario.  While my friend's mom was an organ donor, when they took her off life support, she stayed alive on her own long enough for her organs not to be viable any more and they couldn't donate.  This book just struck a lot of chords in me.

 And since my friend had the same feelings in the story as Edward did (about her mom not wanting to be trapped in that kind of life), I sided with him.  I found myself not really liking Cara at first.  I knew that she had some really big secret (that I didn't figure out in advance) and I was thinking that she was being so selfish by keeping her father alive in a way that he never would have wanted.  But I soon grew to really feel for her and while I say that now I know that my parents would never want to be in a vegatative/unconsious state, I'm not sure that I could end their lives as easily as I would like to think.

And the end is definitely shocking.  There were some twists and surprises that I definitely didn't see coming.  And in true Picoult form, the last couple of pages (before the epilogue) had me in tears.  This was another great book that really pulls at your heartstrings.  I just can't get enough of Jodi Picoult's books!

I gave this book a rating of 4/.5

This book fulfills items in the following challenges:
2012 Reading Challenge 150+: 20

*FTC Disclosure: I was given this book for free for an honest review as part of the Crazy Book Tours.