Book number 7 is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I have not seen the movie, I picked this up because I loved his novel Remains of the Day.

Never Let Me Go is told from the first person narration of one Kathy H. A "carer" for "donors" who has been at her job for a very long time; longer than most seem to be able to do it in fact.

She reminices about her days at a (what sounds like) very idyllic English boarding school called Hailsham. She's repeatedly told she was lucky to have been there, to have learned and had a good life and been treated kindly by the school's various guardians. She had two very close friends at the school, Ruth and Tommy.

It's hard to discuss this novel without talking about the main 'mystery' that is slowly unfolded through Kathy's narration. These are not typical children who are destined to be typical adults. They have singular purposes, to be donors, and once you realize what they are and what they're to be, this book is all at once sinister, sad and even a little appalling. But it's because it's also beautifully written from the POV of a character who is, first and formost, a person. Kathy is a naieve, empathetic, smart girl who never really rails against what she and her friends are reared for. And as much as you want her and Tommy and Ruth to escape their fate, you also know that they won't. For despite everything they learned at Hailsham, about life and art and the tantalizing rumour of 'deferrment', they weren't taught to question. They were taught to just accept because they don't know any better and really, society didn't want them to know any better.

It's an excellent, sympathetic mystery that leaves you questioning... a lot of things.