A review by its_me_mar_p
The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The fatphobia in this book bothered me, though I think the intent behind its use in the story was probably not negative, it reflects a lot of negative views and I did not like that or the way it was 'resolved'. Otherwise I found this a really interesting book, where I learned a lot about Ancient Egyptian death rites, and the role of a death doula in contemporary USA. Some of the scenes with the main character's husband Brian annoyed me, they seemed to be written in an overly schmaltzy way and I'm not sure what the aim here was. I didn't like the way 'scientific' was set up as the opposite of emotonal. Brian seemed autistic coded to me - I'm autistic and have good emotional insight, I found this to be an unhelpful sterotype. That all sounds very negative but I did enjoy this book, I would have liked it to be a little faster paced, but it had a lot of interesting details that I learned and I liked that it discussed issues of how we make choices in life and how you can't really get to my age (nearly 40) without having at least one 'path not taken' that you wonder about - and how do you resolve this and go forward.
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