Picoult is a true storyteller

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Rating: 5 out of 5 hearts

460 pages

Released: February 2013

Buy it @ book depository

Sage Singer befriends an old man who's particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is everyone's favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…and then he confesses his darkest secret - he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard. Complicating the matter? Sage's grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.

What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who's committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was wronged? And most of all - if Sage even considers his request - is it murder, or justice?

Review

“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?

Bread, of course.”   

Jodi Picoult has won me over again with the beautifully written tale of sadness, war, love & forgiveness. To begin with I wasn't all that sure about this, but after getting through the first few chapters the tale truly began.

Picoult doesn't stray away from her normal tradition of writing from multiple characters points of view, which in my opinion gives the reader a greater understanding of each characters personalities. The main players are: Sage; the baker, Josef; the elderly ex-nazi, Minka; Sage's Jewish grandmother and Leo; the love interest. Even though Sage is the main character, her grandmother Minka really stole the show with her story. I think I loved this book so much because of Minka, her story was so moving and it felt like it was a true re-telling of someone's life during World war 2.

Something new that I haven't noticed Picoult do before this is write a book mainly from one person's point of view. Probably 50% of the book is Minka's story and weaved through that is a story within her story. I really liked that she did this, it was a really nice change.

I find that Picoult has a great way of telling romance from a male character's point of view. We are lucky enough to get that again in this with Leo, it helps ease some of the more tense parts of the story. Leo is more than just a love interest though but I won't tell you what that is because it may give too much away.

There must've been a great deal of research done to write this because of the amount of detail that is told not only during the World war 2 scenes, but also the process of making bread (as this is Sage's job it's spoken about quite a lot). There was also a pretty big twist which I had kind of guessed but it was still very well done.

If you are a fan of Jodi Picoult or even if you aren't, you MUST read this book! I look forward to see what she writes next.

On the cover

This isn't the normal cover, this is the audiobook cover. I actually like it, the colours and the dress the girl is wearing is really nice. The barbed wire fence is very poignant.

What I'm listening to next: The Knife of never letting go by Patrick Ness

Handle with care...because you'll be disappointed

Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
477 Pages
Buy it @ book depository

Things break all the time.

Day breaks, waves break, voices break.

Promises break.

Hearts break.



Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, Handle with Care brings us into the heart of a family bound by an incredible burden, a desperate will to keep their ties from breaking, and, ultimately, a powerful capacity for love. Written with the grace and wisdom she's become famous for, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult offers us an unforgettable novel about the fragility of life and the lengths we will go to protect it.

Review: Firstly I need to say I didn't actually finish this book. My initial reason for not finishing this is because I was bored and one of the characters frustrated me. But that wasn't my final reason for not finishing.

I've read many Picoult books before so I know what to expect from them but this one felt like she simply used her formula of 'Mum', 'Dad', 'Child with issue', 'Sibling', 'Lawyer' & 'Extra' as her characters and picking something wrong with the child that is confronting and completely devastating.

You find out that Willow (the Child with issue) has Osteogenesis Imperfecta also known as OI or what I liked to call it, brittle bones. She is born with it and will have hundreds of breaks over a period of her life. I wanted to know what someone with OI would look like so I googled it and I was deeply disturbed. The pictures I found on the internet were so horrific I had to stop looking.

Basically, Willow's mother decides that she can sue her obstetrician (which happens to be her best friend) for not picking up Willow's disability in an early ultrasound.

There were 15 discs in this Audiobook and I had gotten to the 6th Disc and was so bored! Willow's sister really irritated me too. I was sick of her always complaining about living in 'the sticks', not being able to go to the mall and many other teenage selfishness because of her sister's disability. While Willow was the one not complaining even if she had a bad break! I just wished that for once Picoult had written about a sibling that was supportive of not only her disabled brother/sister but also her parents. I know a lot of teenagers think of only themselves but it would've made at least one character interesting in the story.

There was a side story with the lawyer being adopted and trying to find her birth mother. So I'm assuming Picoult put that in there to flesh out the story because there wasn't enough in the main story to keep people interested.

So because of these two things (boring & sister was annoying) I decided to skip to the 13th Disc to see how the story was going and found that it was up to the court case and was still boring! I then went onto Wikipedia to read the plot and found out what happens in the end and I was angry! I was so glad I didn't invest my time listening to this just to have THAT happen in the end, I would've felt like throwing the audiobook out the window of the car! People who have read this will know what I'm talking about.

That's when I made the decision to not continue listening, I could've put up with boring and the annoying sister but not that happening in the end. I have read other reviews about this book and some people think the same as me.

On the Cover: The little girl on this cover is really adorable and her eyelashes are awesome! I wish I had eyelashes like that.

What I'm listening on Audio to next: Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman

Have you read a book that you were glad you didn't finish?

I've had better

House Rules by Jodi Picoult
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

When your son can't look you in the eye...does that mean he's guilty?
Jacob Hunt is a teen with Asperger's syndrome. He's hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, though he is brilliant in many ways. But he has a special focus on one subject - forensic analysis. A police scanner in his room clues him in to crime scenes, and he's always showing up and telling the cops what to do. And he's usually right.
But when Jacob's small hometown is rocked by a terrible murder, law enforcement comes to him. Jacob's behaviors are hallmark Asperger's, but they look a lot like guilt to the local police. Suddenly the Hunt family, who only want to fit in, are directly in the spotlight. For Jacob's mother, Emma, it's a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, Theo, it's another indication why nothing is normal because of Jacob.
And over this small family, the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?


Review: This started off so well, but by the end I was thinking "Just get on with it already!". I've read a couple of fiction books on Aspergers and when I saw that Picoult (a favourite author of mine) had written a book on it too, I had to read it. I was very let down I'm afraid (it seems my favourite authors are doing that to me lately). So as always with Picoult's books we have different characters telling their story. In this we have 5 characters: Emma (the mother), Jacob (the son with Asperger's), Theo (the younger brother of Jacob), Rich (the policeofficer) and Oliver (the lawyer). What I found very frustrating (that I haven't found with her other books) was that sometimes one of the characters would repeat something that has already been said by another character. I don't think it's necessary for another character to mention something again, it just bogged down the story for me. Another thing that got frustrating was Jacob. I don't know anyone personally with Asperger's but I didn't find it believable that someone who had Asperger's would be speaking the way he did. I've read "Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time" by Mark Haddon which is from a young boy's point of view who has Asperger's Syndrome, for me that felt very believable while this didn't. Another rant moment that I got so angry with was when the lawyer and the mother never wanted to ask Jacob what he actually did! I thought to myself "Come on people, he told you he tells the truth", fair enough the lawyer didn't want to know how he commited the crime but as a mother wouldn't you want to know what your son did. But, I guess if Jacob told them what happened truthfully then the book would've been a lot shorter and everything would've been wrapped up quicker (still annoyed me though). I hope you've been able to follow this review because I wrote it still fuming....

Overall I think this book went far too long and it could've been finished in less pages. On a side note Jacob reminded me so much of 'Sheldon' from the "Big Bang Theory", I swear Sheldon has Asperger's!

On the cover: I assume that's the mother wrapped in her son's patchwork blanket. She's looking off in the distance probably wishing her life had turned out differently...

What I'm listening on Audio to next: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Have you read any books my Jodi Picoult? Which is your favourite?

Favourite books of 2011 Part #2

Here is Part #2 of my favourite books read in 2011. Enjoy!

Marcelo in the real world 
by Francisco X. Stork

Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear--part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify--and he's always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm's mailroom in order to experience "the real world." There Marcelo meets Jasmine, his beautiful and surprising coworker, and Wendell, the son of another partner in the firm.

He learns about competition and jealousy, anger and desire. But it's a picture he finds in a file -- a picture of a girl with half a face -- that truly connects him with the real world: its suffering, its injustice, and what he can do to fight.

Reminiscent of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" in the intensity and purity of its voice, this extraordinary novel is a love story, a legal drama, and a celebration of the music each of us hears inside. ~ Click here for my review

Sing you home by Jodi Picoult
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. ~ Click here for my review

 Raising Demons (Hex Hall #2) 
by Rachel Hawkins
Sophie Mercer's first term at Hex Hall turned out to be quite eventful. First the ghost of her evil grandmother haunted her every move, then her best friend was accused of murder and of course there was the discovery that Archer Cross, aka the boy of her dreams, was actually an undercover demon hunter - which would probably be something she could have worked on, if she hadn't also discovered that she was actually the demon Archer was hunting…
So, despite their issues, Sophie is actually relieved to be spending the summer in London with her father. But when your father is Head of The Council of Prodigium and your summer is being spent at the headquarters of everything magical, then a quiet holiday isn't really that likely. And, as Sophie struggles to come to terms with her new found demon powers, she finds herself thrust once again into a world of dark magic and conspiracies. The only thing that could possibly make things more complicated would be for Archer Cross to show up again, which of course he wouldn't, would he? ~ Click here for my review

Harmonick Feedback By Tara Kelly 

Sixteen-year-old, music- and sound design-obsessed Drea doesn't have friends. She has, as she's often reminded, issues. Drea's mom and a rotating band of psychiatrists have settled on "a touch of Asperger's."
Having just moved to the latest in a string of new towns, Drea meets two other outsiders. And Naomi and Justin seem to actually like Drea. The three of them form a band after an impromptu, Portishead-comparison-worthy jam after school. Justin swiftly challenges not only Drea's preference for Poe over Black Lab but also her perceived inability to connect with another person. Justin, against all odds, may even like like Drea.
It's obvious that Drea can't hide behind her sound equipment anymore. But just when she's found not one but two true friends, can she stand to lose one of them? ~ Click here for my review

 A Rose for the Anzac Boys 
by Jackie French
The 'War to end all Wars', as seen through the eyes of three young women

It is 1915. War is being fought on a horrific scale in the trenches of France, but it might as well be a world away from sixteen–year–old New Zealander Midge Macpherson, at school in England learning to be a young lady. But the war is coming closer: Midge's brothers are in the army, and her twin, Tim, is listed as 'missing' in the devastating defeat of the Anzac forces at Gallipoli .

Desperate to do their bit – and avoid the boredom of school and the restrictions of Society – Midge and her friends Ethel and Anne start a canteen in France, caring for the endless flow of wounded soldiers returning from the front. Midge, recruited by the over–stretched ambulance service, is thrust into carnage and scenes of courage she could never have imagined. And when the war is over, all three girls – and their Anzac boys as well – discover that even going 'home' can be both strange and wonderful. ~ Click here for my review

Die for me by Amy Plum
In the City of Lights, two star-crossed lovers battle a fate that is destined to tear them apart again and again for eternity.

When Kate Mercier's parents die in a tragic car accident, she leaves her life--and memories--behind to live with her grandparents in Paris. For Kate, the only way to survive her pain is escaping into the world of books and Parisian art. Until she meets Vincent.

Mysterious, charming, and devastatingly handsome, Vincent threatens to melt the ice around Kate's guarded heart with just his smile. As she begins to fall in love with Vincent, Kate discovers that he's a revenant--an undead being whose fate forces him to sacrifice himself over and over again to save the lives of others. Vincent and those like him are bound in a centuries-old war against a group of evil revenants who exist only to murder and betray. Kate soon realizes that if she follows her heart, she may never be safe again. ~ Click here for my review

 Lola & the boy next door
by Stephanie Perkins
Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn’t believe in fashion . . . she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit -- more sparkly, more fun, more wild -- the better. But even though Lola’s style is outrageous, she’s a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.

When Cricket -- a gifted inventor -- steps out from his twin sister’s shadow and back into Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door. ~ Click here for my review

 Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
A novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932. When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her. ~ Click here for my review

Have you read any of these books? Did you like them?

*Pictures and blurbs taken from goodreads