More Fiction

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


First of all, the long book is a page turner from the start. That’s pretty hard to sustain! There are three stories: Asher, a teen; Olivia, his mother; and Lily the girl he has just begun to date. There are only two narrators; Olivia and Lily–what we learn about Asher is through their eyes. In the afterward we are told that Picoult wrote Olivia and Boylan, Lily. Reading it, I didn’t feel shifts in style, probably because they edited the whole together. Lily’s story is told in reverse chronology, Olivia’s is mostly forward moving, though with many flashbacks. Asher’s chronology varies with who is narrating. This allows for interesting pacing of details and tensions.

There is a death/?murder and a trial and enough red herrings to keep readers shifting opinions. (I’d made a correct choice of whodunit, but it was one among several choices.) The main characters are fully deveoped, minor ones a little less so. I cared what happened to the main three and some of the minor ones. A couple were just hateful.

The information about bees was interesting, and I have a feeling it has more significance than I found on first reading, significance beyond something Olivia enjoys and goes to when she needs comfort or she and Asher do together when they need to communicate.

A good read and a good introduction to Boylan. Now her books are also on my to-read list.



View all my reviews

Advertisement