The Good Sister by Jamie Kain (review)

The specter of Sarah’s possible death has defined the Kinsey family since Sarah’s first diagnosis of leukemia when she was eight, but after two remissions and a bright outlook, her fall from a cliff into the Pacific sends them all reeling in this book narrated in turns by each of the Kinsey sisters. Asha, the youngest sister, who worshipped Sarah and twice donated bone marrow, can’t figure out how to live in a world without her hero. Rachel, the middle sister, who felt abandoned and left out of the family fight to save Sarah, simmers with resentment that all eyes are once again on a sister she knows was not the saint everyone thought she was. Sarah herself has a voice in this tragedy as well, spooling out meditations on life, guilt, and grief from beyond the grave. Their former flower-child parents had long since divorced and become twenty-first-century sellouts, leaving the girls ill equipped to process their grief with any kind of emotional integrity and making them vulnerable to boys who want to damage them as well as boys who want to save them. Fortunately, the steadfastness of two very different young men with very different agendas refocuses Rachel and Asha away from what they’ve lost and toward what they still have, namely, each other. While the emotional wrench of early death is nothing new in young adult fiction, this book stands out for its unflinching honesty and lyrical intensity; there are no John Green–style heroes here, just selfish, flawed people muddling through, making a thorough mess of things but managing to hang on to just enough love to move forward.