Mad Honey, by Jodi Picoult; Jennifer Finney Boylan (Ballantine)
Jodi Picoult’s writing never fails to blow me away. She
tackles complex and difficult issues with compassion, nuance, and page-turning
drama. I’ll gladly gobble up anything she writes, so I nabbed a copy of Mad
Honey without reading the description. I wasn’t familiar with co-author Jennifer
Finney Boylan; Picoult’s name on the cover was enough to sell me. And what a
journey the two of them took me on! The collaboration was a brilliant idea, a
duet of two distinct voices with two authentic life experiences.
I won’t elaborate on the plot too much, because the plot
twists are half of what kept me up way too late, turning the pages. Suffice it
to say that the backstory of boy-meets-girl, each from a family with hidden trauma,
quickly explodes into tragedy. From there, the story—told in alternating points
of view of the girl and the boy’s mother—plays out from that turning point, one
story unfurling into the past, the events leading up to the crisis, the other
taking the story forward. If this sounds confusing, it isn’t. The dual timelines/narrators
layer connection upon connection like a four-dimensional tapestry. I found
myself falling in love with characters and wishing them happiness even when I already
knew this would never be their fate.
It is a mark of the skill of the authors and their chosen narrative
structure that the twin struggles of a trans teen coming into their own and an
abused woman seeking safety and empowerment perfectly mirror and inform each
other. The story left me wanting to rush up to everyone I know and demand that
they read it!
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