Mercy by Jodi Picoult

After having read a fair few Picoult books (she is my guilty pleasure), I can conclude that this one is not much different from any other one I have read. The book deals with a contentious social issue, that of mercy killing or euthanasia. As usual, the book is also centred around two main characters who have relationship problems, as well as a court trial that happens to go luckily, it features 'true love and the characters are meaningless and not at all complete.

This sounds terribly negative, Jodi Picoult is a celebrated author of contemporary novels, I say novels rather than literature because personally I don't think she is an exceptional writer or that she brings anything original to her profession. I believe the main reason why she is so popular is because she writes about interesting things; for example some of my favourite books by her include: a falsely accused sex offender, school shootings, life with a person who has severe disabilities and all of them, every single one feature a person in love who does not treat his/her partner well or cheats on them.

Picoult obviously has a lot of ideas, books by her continue to come out. Handle with Care being the latest example. This book showed nothing new to me, the excerpts of a journal at the beginning of chapters were not interesting and the discussion of euthanasia held nothing that peaked my interest. Perhaps my favourite character in this book was (slightly) Mia, a character who couldn't stay anywhere and had seemed to be all over the world. The book did not go much into her character though and went more into the exceptionally walk-all-over-me character, Allie and her husband who obviously had affection but not love for her. The background about Scotland was interesting but nto overly informative.

Maybe I have finally gotten over my Picoult addiction?

A Poisoned Mind by Natasha Cooper

I actually liked this book more than the last one I read below Gagged & Bound, the plot line somehow seemed to ring more true to me. Perhaps the one I read first wasn't a good one to start off with as I was under the illusion that these books were about both Trish Maguire, the lawyer and her friend Caro, the police office. This one focused on just Trish with only a couple of mentions of Caro and they did not seem to be as close as they were in the other book.

This one covers a case which Trish defends on behalf of a waste management company who are being sued by a woman who's husband died after one of their tanks exploded. Trish sees something fishy in the case from the start, and begins to think the tanks on the property were somehow sabotaged. She also has personal problems with her son who's new friend's misbehavior causes problems among the family, despite this Trish and her husband take the friend under their wing who is suffering physical abuse from his brother.

The reason this book seemed more believable was the role of the lawyer and her ethical stance leading her to uncover what was an unfair case against the company she is representing. I'm doing law and just from my viewpoint it seemed she took a far more lawyer-ish stance than in the last book I read by Cooper. She has also just received her 'silks' making her a QC and this book also covers her fight to be recognised in her firm after her senior is injured in an accident.

The criticism I would have of this book is it seems to involve crisis after crisis especially with the troubled friend of her son. It did seem realistic I guess but a bit too dramatic.

A good read either way if you are into crime novels, or thrillers I recommend it.
Next up: Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert