Handle with Care
by Jodi Picoult
genre: drama
Synopsis from Goodreads
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” 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?
Rating
As an author, I sometimes feel guilty giving bad reviews, but we’re not all going to like each other’s body of work. As such, I feel obligated to go into detail explaining my reason for bad ratings more than good, meaning this is going to be a long one and because I cannot explain my rating without giving away some spoilers, I’m going to post it up front.
If I could give Handle with Care a 0 I would. Since I cannot, I reluctantly give it a 1.
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