Sing You Home by Jodi PicoultMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Time Taken To Read - 1 day
Blurb From Goodreads
One miscarriage too many spelled the end of Max and Zoe Baxter's marriage. Though the former couple went quite separate ways, their fates remained entangled: After veering into alcoholism, Max is saved in multiple senses by his fundamentalist conversion; Zoe, for her part, finds healing relief in music therapy and the friendship, then romantic love with Vanessa, her counselor. After Zoe and Vanessa, now married, decide to have a baby, they realize that they must join battle with Max, who objects on both religious and financial grounds. Like her House Rules and several other previous Jodi Picoult novels, Sing You Home grapples with hot button issues. The novel also includes a CD of songs, each matched with a chapter in the book. Perfect for book clubs.
My Review
This story is broke into chapters with the 3 main characters, Zoe, Max and Vanessa. After the breakdown of their marriage both Max and Zoe go through some life changing experiences and the story follows it from their views. Vanessa comes into Zoe's life at a horrific moment and from there builds a friendship that blossoms into love. When Zoe and Vanessa decide to have a baby and want to use the embryos from Max and Zoe's previous attempts, Max's new found faith and congregation have a lot to say and fight it.
When you haven't read an author for ages (one of your favs) you forget how good they are and how well they paint a picture. Jodi is an amazing writer, she brings the characters to life as she has done here. You can feel the raw emotions and live the lives of these people for the duration of the book and experience the highs and lows they go through. It is a rollercoaster ride of emotion, hurt, anger, religion, politics and just about everything else that goes with it. What is right in the eyes of the church and the law to what is just human nature. This book provokes a lot of thought and I am sure a lot of opinions.
My only issue with it is with the little girl Zoe teaches I felt we had a few unanswered questions (which you know I hate) and I felt the ended rushed a bit. For example how did the people react after the court case and what happened in the lead up to the end chapter, that would have been fairly explosive and I was a little saddened I didn't get to find out how it got to that actual part (sorry to be vague but I don't do spoilers). Other than that it was a wonderful read that I found hard to put down, 4/5 for me and I will have to bump up the others on my tbr.
This is one of the few Jodi Picoult books that I haven't read yet! I do have a copy, in hardback, from when it was released, but for some reason I haven't read it yet. I am really looking forward to getting to it after your review.
ReplyDelete