Mad Honey

Mad Honey, a collaborative writing effort of Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan, is a difficult novel to write about without giving too much away. In fact, I thought long and hard about which labels I wanted to use in describing this post. In the end, I decided that less is more.

Like almost all Picoult novels, this one, Mad Honey, is based on current events, involves a bunch of courtroom scenes and meetings with lawyers, and has a twist somewhere in the story to make you realize at that point that the novel isn't going in the direction you thought it was headed.

The two authors worked very well together. Seaminglessly.The story was told in two voices, from two perspectives. Olivia, the single mom of Asher, and Lily, Asher's girlfriend. I imagined that one author was responsible for writing Olivia's chapters and the other for Lily's chapters. That wasn't exactly the case. Boylan came up with the idea for the novel and Picoult jumped right aboard. 

I wasn't always happy with the trajectory of the plot. I thought the novel dragged in places and was too rushed in others. I wasn't totally satisfied with how some of the subplots were wrapped up. Yet I would still highly recommend this novel. Why? Because it's so informative about current issues. And while these issues surely don't impact everyone directly, they do - or should - impact everyone indirectly. It's important to know about these issues in an attempt to understand and be accepting of others whose life experiences are not like yours. Plus, it was interesting to learn about beekeeping and honey. I knew some of the facts offered about honey but certainly not all. (Yes, I do love honey. And I really appreciated the honey recipes at the end of the book. I wish I baked. I'd be making up a honey loaf right now!)