See, reading about the ending of the book, I don’t know if (for me) that’s any better than the ending of the movie. It just seems needlessly sad and cruel, to end a book like that. Could it happen, yeah, sure… but reading how her kidney ends up being donated to her sister, it sounds like Anna’s death doesn’t serve a point other than the author to say, look how sad this is! The heart-wrenching choices Anna made don’t really matter in the end because then she dies, and her kidney goes to her sister anyway. (It seems a bit like punishment for Anna daring to make decisions about her own body) It also seems like it would negate most of what happened in the book before, because then you can’t really feel ambivalent about Anna, because you now have to care because she dies.

For me, a better ending would be that Anna has to live with her decision, knowing her sister might die because of it. There’s realistic sadness, and there’s the form of ‘grief porn’, like the Lurlene McDaniel books, where the grief about dying is exploited as a shortcut for caring about the characters and making it ‘deep and meaningful’, rather than let people form their own conclusions. It seems like both the movie and the book follow that convention in the end.

I hate Cameron Diaz with a passion. And I really like Campbell Alexander’s character, but I hate Alec Baldwin and there was no point in putting his epilepsy in the movie if they then took out every other single thing about him. Like, his kid. And his assistant, who I really love in the book, what was her name.. Selena? (Although I can’t remember if she was in My Sister’s Keeper or The Pact.)

And the took out everything that made you feel for Jesse, and his total fucked-up ness that got ignored.

And the whole jumping around thing confused me, let alone people who HAVEN’T read the book.

And the random family members in that scene at the end, right before Kate dies?? They had no point either, except to make that scene awkward and drawn out and talk like Rainman. “Definitely, pizza. Yeah, definitely. Definitely.”