Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult is essentially the story of two women friends, Alex and Lacy, connected to each other through their roles as mothers. Alex’s daughter Josie is a teenager who to all outward appearances is a popular, happy girl. While privately a tortured individual, Josie suffers from depression, has contemplated suicide and thinks of her life ” as a room with no doors and no windows. A room where there really wasn’t an escape.” Peter, Lacy’s son and a classmate and childhood friend of Josie, has had to deal with peer abuse from the moment he entered kindergarten. These four characters are thrown into an emotional roller coaster when Peter decides to take revenge on his classmates.
The book bounces back every other chapter to the past, trying to explain what drove Peter to take such drastic measures, which signs his parents might have missed and what type of roll Josie played in the events.
One of my favorite books by Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper, was a dramatic read right up to the shocking, heart wrenching ending. I wish the same can be said of her latest novel.
If you have ever read a Mary Higgins Clark novel, then you can pretty much predict the entire plot line in the first few chapters. Her mysteries are neatly packaged and extremely predictable. The guy who is ultimately the “bad guy” is the one least likely to have done it. Obviously this is a popular writing style, since Higgins Clark keeps hitting the best seller list with each new book. I don’t want to say that Picoult is heading in a similar direction, but I found Nineteen Minutes to be far too predictable and at the end, a bit outlandish. This book followed the plotline of another one of her courtroom dramas, The Pact. Even though I felt that The Pact was a better read, I do remember being disappointed in it’s unlikely ending.
If you haven’t read a Picoult novel, go check out My Sister’s Keeper. Otherwise, skip over this predictable read.
- Stephanie
