Book Review :: Handle With Care, by Jodi Picoult

Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
on November 1st 2009
Genres: Contemporary, Fiction
Pages: 576
Goodreads

Charlotte's daughter Willow was born with a severe form of brittle bone disease. One stumble could force her to spend months in a body cast. Willow's condition is expensive, and her family face financial ruin.

Then Charlotte is offered a lifeline. She could sue her doctor for 'wrongful birth'. But her doctor is her best friend.

Last updated on 26 February 2025

This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase with one of these links, I recieve a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read the full Affiliate Policy.

My thoughts on Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult

It’s been a while since I’ve written about a book that I’ve finished…but that’s because I can never finish a Jodi Picoult book very fast. Don’t get wrong, I love her stories and enjoy reading them (if I didn’t…I wouldn’t), but I find it takes me longer to read than any other books. Maybe it’s because I really have to concentrate, or because so much is going on in them, storyline-wise, or because more often than not, a lot of technical words are used and my small arts-centred brain struggles to keep up. But I did finally finish Handle with Care, and I really enjoyed it.

It was quite intense, but all Jodi Picoult books are. The first book of hers I ever read My Sister’s Keeper, which is probably her most famous, especially as it was made into a film (don’t even get me started on THAT disappointment!!). We had to read it for Year 12 English class, and we had to get permission from our parents beforehand because that was an intense book, too.

Anyway, Handle With Care was really good. Another great storyline, with twists and turns and moral dilemmas galore. I was expecting a twist at the end, because a lot of her stories have a twist ending (which is what made me angry about the My Sister’s Keeper movie ending – they changed it so the twist didn’t happen! Grrr), but I won’t tell you if my expectations were met or not; you’ll have to read it.

Like most of her books, it’s written from the perspective of the different characters in the story… so each chapter is from the view of a character, and they swap and shift throughout the book. One of the perspectives is from 13-year-old Amelia, so it’s really interesting how the writing style changes as you read about life through Amelia’s eyes.

That’s another cool thing about this book, it is written so that, even though the perspective changes throughout, Picoult writes so it always addresses to ‘you’, or Willow, who the court case is about. So, it would be like ‘you were sitting on the couch as I made dinner and you asked me … etc’. Make sense?

Although I thought it was a great book and I gave it a 4 star, I didn’t like it as much as some of her other books. I’ve read quite a few now (ooo! I’m gonna make a list!), and I think my favourite was Change of Heart which you read about here, oh and I really enjoyed The Tenth Circle.