Mercy - Jodi Picoult

I love a good book, one that I can really get stuck into and can't put down forget the housework and just escape. I usually don't get the luxury of doing this unless we are on holiday but at the moment I am stuck indoors due to an operation on my foot and am confined to the sofa! So I sent the other half out shopping (culture shock for him!) and asked him to pick me up a book, I was initially a bit worried what he would bring back I had visions of the newest SAS survival manual but to my surprise he bought back this one, so did I get stuck into it? THE AUTHOR Jodi Picoult was born and raised in Long island in America in what she calls a very happy and ...  Read the complete review

Allie MacDonald and her husband, the police chief - Cam MacDonald - live in a lovely town. Their marriage is a happy one if not for all of Allie's efforts going into keeping Cam happy, not because he is an unreasonable man but because she loves with every fibre in her body. On a regular morning for them however, Jamie MacDonald, a cousin who had not really been close to Cam at all, turned up at the police station with his dead wife in their car claiming to be the one to have killed her. He is distraught and won't let anyone touch her body. It is Cam's job to bring him to trial for the killing of his wife, although things are never that easy when it ...  Read the complete review

I am a huge fan of the american writer Jodi Picoult and find each of her novels fresh and original. Every time, she seems to come up with a successful formula in her storylines and her novel Mercy is no exception. I was a bit worried when I first started reading the book though as I found it quite difficult to get into. I wondered whether I had been spoilt after reading such fantastic novels as Plain Truth or Nineteen Minutes. However, in true Picoult style she slowly reeled me in to the story and after about one hundred pages I was hooked! Jodi Picoult is not afraid to tackle difficult topics and in Mercy she probably tackles the most difficult of ...  Read the complete review

As always with Jodi Picoult books, this story surrounds a crime and the subsequent courtcase but this is actually a relatively small part of this book so I wouldn't really class it as a courtroom drama or crime novel but most definitely a character driven drama. Whilst the main topic being explored is love and relationships, I find it to be far from a romance, so if you go into it expecting it to be one you could be disappointed. It's about love, yes, but it's more exploring the whole "it's not always rainbows and butterflies" aspect of things, and is about human nature and how people act and what drives us to do the things we do. Whilst book covers ...  Read the complete review

An increasingly familiar name to anyone who keeps even half an ear on literary matters, Jodi Picoult has published a number of novels that share a familiar format and focus on topical issues. In fact, Picoult is such a popular writer that I often feel I must be missing something when I reflect on my fairly negative feelings about her novels, so I decided to try one more to help me reach a fairer conclusion. I chose 'Mercy' because it covers a particularly interesting topical issue...and because it was on sale for 20p at the library! Would this be the novel that convinced me to change my opinion? The central idea is an engaging one: Jamie MacDonald suffocates ...  Read the complete review