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?

Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

This book didn't differ hugely from her other books, it was full of twists and turns which keep the reader turning the pages, although I will say I thought the ending was slightly unnecessary. She also related the career of the mother, Charlotte as a chef to the twists of the book with recipes and definitions of cooking terms which were good to begin with but perhaps shouldn't have been continued throughout the entire book as they veered from the plot a little and detracted from the story.

Her books do seem to follow a pattern and they can because of this be quite predictable, they do address very important issues and this one covered: adoption, abortion, eating disorders, depression and self injury, ethics, disabilities and friendships. They also provide detailed descriptions about parenting and being the mother or father of children how it can save you but also break you heart.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who has read Picoult before, if you haven't I'd recommend the book also by her The Pact which I personally think is her best and provides all of the components of all her books but with some sort of ex factor.