Reviews

First of all, overall I enjoyed the book but there were a few things that bothered me/I didn't like. Once again we have a mother falling in love with her son's lawyer while he's on trial for murder. I'm sorry, but really? Not only that but there's like a 10-15 year age gap. Not everyone has to fall in love with someone. In general the story was slow moving there was a lot of flashbacks and tangents, while helpful after a while just dragged the story on too long. And we weren't told what really happened until the last 10 pages or so; which I guess keeps the reader interested until the very end, but is also frustrating as a reader. (I won't count that necessarily as a negative for the book.) Like I said I enjoyed the book but there were a few things that stuck out that prevented me from loving it.

janelleybanelley's review against another edition

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dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

kept me reading & caught my interest. but had to take stars away for the anti-vaccine drops, a mother who dedicated her life to her son ending up ditching that in the final stretch by having sex with her son’s lawyer, & author making the main character have every single autism symptom while also not doing anything to reduce stigma.
disappointing.

sam_hartwig's review against another edition

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2.0

This started off so well, but by the end I was thinking "Just get on with it already!". I've read a couple of fiction books on Aspergers and when I saw that Picoult (a favourite author of mine) had written a book on it too, I had to read it. I was very let down I'm afraid (it seems my favourite authors are doing that to me lately). So as always with Picoult's books we have different characters telling their story. In this we have 5 characters: Emma (the mother), Jacob (the son with Asperger's), Theo (the younger brother of Jacob), Rich (the policeofficer) and Oliver (the lawyer). What I found very frustrating (that I haven't found with her other books) was that sometimes one of the characters would repeat something that has already been said by another character. I don't think it's necessary for another character to mention something again, it just bogged down the story for me. Another thing that got frustrating was Jacob. I don't know anyone personally with Asperger's but I didn't find it believable that someone who had Asperger's would be speaking the way he did. I've read "Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time" by Mark Haddon which is from a young boy's point of view who has Asperger's Syndrome, for me that felt very believable while this didn't. Another rant moment that I got so angry with was when the lawyer and the mother never wanted to ask Jacob what he actually did! I thought to myself "Come on people, he told you he tells the truth", fair enough the lawyer didn't want to know how he commited the crime but as a mother wouldn't you want to know what your son did. But, I guess if Jacob told them what happened truthfully then the book would've been a lot shorter and everything would've been wrapped up quicker (still annoyed me though). I hope you've been able to follow this review because I wrote it still fuming....

Overall I think this book went far too long and it could've been finished in less pages. On a side note Jacob reminded me so much of 'Sheldon' from the "Big Bang Theory", I swear Sheldon has Asperger's!

Also on my blog http://love-sami13.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/ive-had-better.html