Author: Priscille Sibley
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 402
Summary: Matt and Elle Beaulieu are a match made in heaven. In love since they were children, their only struggles lie in Elle's inability to carry a baby full term. What started out as an ordinary day in their hectic lives turns tragic when Elle suffers a horrific accident. Brain dead and on life support, Matt immediately recognizes her dim prognosis. To him, his beloved "Peep" he has known all his life is already gone. Just as he is about to pull the plug, a full body exam reveals the unimaginable. Elle is eight weeks pregnant, and the fetus survived the accident. Suddenly, the very thought of losing the last bit of Elle makes Matt physically sick. Unfortunately, Elle has a pre-existing will in place, specifically outlining her strong views regarding being kept alive by extreme medical measures. Matt finds himself pitted against his own family in a courtroom battle for Elle's best interests. His own mother claims Elle wouldn't have wanted to exist as a vegetable, while Matt knows her true heart. With her previous history of miscarriages and her autoimmune disease, the chances of the baby surviving to term are highly unlikely. In this epic war of ethics, Matt must fight for what he knows is right, and the child he has always wanted.
Review: Priscille Sibley makes her writing debut in this heart wrenching moral dilemma drama. Like a Jodi Picoult novel for the Young Adult set, Sibley jumps right into the story full steam ahead. The conflict appears almost instantly, without much attention paid to setting the scene. Usually, I prefer to have a little more meat to the beginning of a story. It allows the reader the chance to become totally enveloped in the reality of the novel. The author makes up for it by alternating the present with the past, filling in the holes of the backstory as she goes along. As for Matt, I found his character to be a little off. He claims to have a close knit relationship with his mother, yet he doesn't hesitate to completely shut her out when their opinions on Elle's fate differ. His mother appears to feel remorseful of the conflict while Matt chooses to wallow in self pity, remaining indifferent. Matt also believes that he knows everything about his now comatose wife, even though they spent the better part of a decade seeing other people before finally deciding to get married. As the movie "Titanic" so eloquently stated, " A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets." Unless Matt has morphed into Edward Cullen and can read minds, he couldn't possibly know everything about Elle.
Elle, though dead from the get go, holds a strong presence throughout the entire book. Her spunk makes her the most likable character in the novel, and you can't help but love her. You will find yourself so engrossed in this story that it will take over every waking minute of your life until you close the back cover.
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