ARC Review: All These Lives

All These Lives, Sarah Wylie

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult

Publication: 6/5/2012, Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux (BYR)

# of Pages: 245 (Hardcover)

Source: I received an Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis from Goodreads:  Sixteen-year-old Dani is convinced she has nine lives. As a child she twice walked away from situations where she should have died. But Dani’s twin, Jena, isn’t so lucky.  She has cancer and might not even be able to keep her one life. Dani’s father is in denial. Her mother is trying to hold it together and prove everything’s normal.  And Jena is wasting away. 

To cope, Dani sets out to rid herself of all her extra lives.  Maybe they’ll be released into the universe and someone who wants to live more than she does will get one.  Someone like Jena.  But just when Dani finds herself at the breaking point, she’s faced with a startling realization.  Maybe she doesn’t have nine lives after all.  Maybe she really only ever had one.

My Review:  You should all know by now that I am a sucker for a good contemporary. The more it makes me cry, the higher it goes on my list of favorites. But I don't like them all. Because these stories are realistic and I can't rely on hot vampires or thrilling action scenes to get me through, it has to be a story that sucks me in. It has to be about a character whose story I can't stop thinking about when I'm not reading.

All These Lives did just that. I'd picked up a few other review books prior to grabbing this one and they all failed to hold my attention until I got to Dani. She's got this rough exterior that made me want to crack it, so I could look inside and see all the broken little pieces she was trying so hard to hide.

She also has a tremendous amount of love for her twin sister and this struck a nerve in the sister center of my brain. I have many sisters. I couldn't begin to think about living without even one of them. So, it was easy for me to sympathize with Dani's situation. She doesn't know how to deal with a sick sister so she avoids her. But more than anything she wants Jena to just be okay again. Throw in the fact that Dani has had a few run-ins with death and cheated him, and you've got yourself a confused little girl who thinks she can transfer some of her extra lives to her sister.

Realistic and vivid, All These Lives is an emotional, heartfelt tale of two sisters in an excruciating situation. It broke my heart a little bit but I really enjoyed it. It's easy to read the synopsis and classify this as a "cancer book" but it's not. It's not out to manipulate emotions or to force sympathy. It's more about Dani coming to terms with being very much alive than it is about Jena's illness. In the end, it's about life, not death.

Goodreads / Amazon