The most compelling, challenging and contemporary novel you will read this year – and which will start conversations we need to have around authenticity, identity and gender.

From the bestselling authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan comes a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.

Olivia fled her abusive marriage to return to her hometown and take over the family beekeeping business when her son Asher was six. Now, impossibly, her baby is six feet tall and in his last year of high school, a kind, good-looking, popular ice hockey star with a tiny sprite of a new girlfriend.

Lily also knows what it feels like to start over – when she and her mother relocated to New Hampshire it was all about a fresh start. She and Asher couldn’t help falling for each other, and Lily feels happy for the first time. But can she trust him completely?

Then Olivia gets a phone call – Lily is dead, and Asher is arrested on a charge of murder. As the case against him unfolds, she realises he has hidden more than he’s shared with her. And Olivia knows firsthand that the secrets we keep reflect the past we want to leave behind ­­- and that we rarely know the people we love as well as we think we do.

My Review

As this book is jointly written by Jodi Picoult, you know that it will raise important questions and make you think.

One of the questions this book asks is whether we are entitled to keep secrets about our past from the people we love. Some secrets are best left buried if they do not in any way affect anyone else. But there are others where it is necessary to tell the truth and leave the recipient of the secret to decide for themselves whether it’s something they can live with. Or is it?

I am not going to give any personal opinions here. I have to play devil’s advocate though suffice to say that my sympathies lay entirely with Lily and her mother Ava. I would like to think I would have behaved like Ava in the same circumstances. And I cried for Lily over and over.

Olivia, on the other hand, can be very naive and annoying, but that’s the whole point. Her voice will be that of many people. Her own experiences in her abusive marriage tempers her opinions and even allows her to doubt Asher’s innocence at times. Would you? Would I? Nature or nurture? I just don’t know.

If I had one criticism it would be that some of the information – for instance all about the bees – can be a bit drawn out making the book a little overlong. However, many of my fellow Pigeon readers liked the ‘bee’ stuff best. Maybe if I was reading on holiday with all the time in the world I would feel differently.

But regardless of how you feel, there is no denying it’s a brilliant book that will stay with you for a long time. I’m so glad I read it.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.

About the Author

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-eight novels, including Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, and My Sister’s Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. Picoult lives in New Hampshire.

Jennifer Finney Boylan is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books. A nationally known advocate for human rights, she is a trustee of PEN America. For many years she was the national co-chair of GLAAD as well as a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She lives in New York City and Belgrade Lakes, Maine, with her wife, Deedie. They have a son, Sean, and a daughter, Zai.