Beth Ann's 2009 Reading Challenge: Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Read in June
480 pages

One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen. For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.

Jodi is one of my favorites so of course I really liked this book. Jodi really goes into religion in this book and is so good at making you really feel for each side. I really don't think I changed my views on the death penalty though, but you can tell she did A LOT of research for this book. She broke down each chapter with a different character, which she does in a lot of her books, and she still uses her normal formula that she does in pretty much all her books. Sometimes I get kinda bored with her courtroom scenes, I enjoyed them in this book. I really enjoyed reading Maggie's character, I think she was my favorite, and also Father Michael's. I think she could have done more with the ending, however. I liked the ending, but I just wish that there had been something more with Shay. A good book and I was able to read it rather quickly.

Links:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Change-of-Heart/Jodi-Picoult/e/9780743496759/?itm=1

http://www.jodipicoult.com/

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I am currently reading trying to figure out what I am going to read next. We are going on a vacation so I'm sure I'll have something by the time we leave tomorrow. I can't just sit in the car for the next 12 hours without anything to read!

Just a few books my To Be Read List:
March by Geraldine Brooks
~From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
~Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born.

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
~Set during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republica in 1960, this extraordinary novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
~Barcelona, 1945-A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind, by an author named Julian Carax. When the boy searches for Carax's other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has ever written. Soon the boy realizes that The Shadow of the Wind is as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget, for the mystery of its author's identity holds the key to an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love that someone will go to any lengths to keep secret.

A Thousan Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
~A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years — from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding — that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives — the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness — are inextricable from the history playing out around them.