Book Review- Jodi Picoult's Wish You Were Here

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for a copy of Jodi Picoult’s novel Wish You Were Here.

Diana’s life is going according to her plan. She works at an auction house and is about to orchestrate a career changing sale of a famous piece of art. Her long-time boyfriend, Finn, is finishing his residency at a local hospital and will be a surgeon. Diana is confident that Finn will propose to her on their upcoming Galapagos vacation and soon, they will be married and buying their first home. Life is perfect in early 2020.

Finn’s boss cancels all vacation requests as pandemic worries begin to grow, but Finn presses Diana to take their vacation alone. Nervous to travel solo and missing Finn, Diana arrives in Galapagos, and is forced to make an quick decision; she can either stay on the island or head back to the airport, with no guarantee of making a flight, as the world is starting to shut-down due to the pandemic. She has no cell service and is unaware of the severity of the situation. Diana decides to stay and ends up stuck on a remote island discovering that the hotel where she had reservations, has closed. A kind local woman allows Diana to stay in a small apartment that used to belong to her son.

Alone, isolated, and unable to contact Finn, Diana begins to embrace being stuck in paradise. She befriends a local teenage girl and the girl’s handsome father, who happens to be the previous tenant of the apartment where she is staying. Diana finds a second family and an alternative life in the Galapagos, while Finn is fighting on the frontlines in a New York hospital.

When I started reading Wish You Were Here and realized it was yet another pandemic story, I nearly stopped reading. It makes sense that so many pandemic stories are publishing now and that so many authors would be compelled to write pandemic stories, but it also is a subject that I don’t want to keep revisiting. However, to would-be-readers in a similar state of mind, don’t give up on this one.

Picoult presents both a twist on the pandemic story and a huge, monumental, didn’t see it coming, surprise half-way through. I was just about to stop reading for the evening and I encountered the twist, which propelled me to read for another hour. It was a huge shock and even better, it ties to intriguing themes of the story which are not strictly pandemic related. Wish You Were Here is far more broad thematically and would have been a different story if the pandemic had not occurred, but likely still would have been written.

I’ve read many of Picoult’s books and I’m a fan, but Wish You Were Here, just may be her best one yet.

Book Review- Jodi Picoult's The Book of Two Ways

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine Books for providing me with a copy of Jodi Picoult’s latest novel, The Book of Two Ways, in exchange for an honest review.

While working on a dig in Egypt, graduate student Dawn Edelstein receives a call that her mom has terminal cancer. Dawn rushes back to the United States, both abandoning her dreams of becoming an Egyptologist and leaving behind a new, yet very passionate relationship with a fellow student named Wyatt.

While her mother is in hospice, Dawn meets Brian, a physicist whose grandmother is dying. Responsible and thoughtful, Brian is the polar opposite to the charming and adventurous Wyatt. Dawn realizes that with her mother’s death, her life has changed; she can no longer afford to complete her degree and she must assume guardianship of her underaged brother. Rather than reach out to Wyatt and explain her situation, she simple moves forward with life, marrying Bryan, and soon discovering that she is pregnant.

Dawn’s interest in Egyptology centered around death and the afterlife, so it wasn’t surprising that she found purpose in her new career as a “death doula.” A bit different from a hospice worker, a death doula provides emotional and spiritual support to the dying and their loved ones. Dawn helps fulfill final requests to allow the terminally ill to end their lives in peace.

Brian and Dawn settle into their routines and their relationship suffers. Dawn has trouble relating to her teenage daughter, Meret, who has more in common with Brian. Often, it feels as if Meret and Brian have teamed up against her.

After being involved in a plane crash, and having her own life and death experience, Dawn realizes that she must return to Egypt to take care of her own unfinished business. She calls her family to tell them she is okay, but rather than catching the next flight home, she hops on a flight to Egypt, where Wyatt is now the professor in charge of the dig site. Can Dawn fix the past? How will her past influence her present?

I’ve read many of Picoult’s previous novels and I’m a fan. I was thrilled for the opportunity to read The Book of Two Ways. It’s a beautiful story about love, loss, and the choices that we make.

The passion between Dawn and Wyatt is electric. I was blushing from what I was reading and it almost felt like I was intruding on their privacy! I don’t generally read romance novels, and The Book of Two Ways is more literary than romance, yet the love story aspect of it is one of the most passionate that I have ever read. I’m just going to admit it, I was crushing on Wyatt!

The other primary relationship is between Dawn and Meret. Meret is having a difficult time making friends in school and she embarrassed that she is overweight. It’s not easy that Dawn is effortlessly thin and cannot relate to her daughter. Picoult does a fine job at creating the dynamic between mother and daughter, but also having them work through their issues in a realistic way. Dawn has complicated relationships with all of the characters, but none are without love.

Prior to reading The Book of Two Ways, I had never heard of a death doula and I found it fascinating. I have been the primary caregiver for several family members who have passed, in fact, I have no close blood relatives alive, and I would have loved to have had the guidance of a death doula. It is such a compassionate and lovely way to help the dying and also to aid their loved ones with grieving.

Overall, I loved The Book of Two Ways. My only small complaint is that Picoult sometimes bogged down the story with explanations of Egyptian history and mythology. It was a bit too much and detracted from Dawn’s story. It was interesting, but it certainly slowed the pace and felt like a different novel entirely- more history textbook than novel.

That said, if you are a fan of Picoult, this is a must read. It’s a raw and honest story of how our relationships and the choices we make impact not only our life, but the way we feel about transitioning to our next life.