Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan, Jodi Picoult

135 reviews

boba_n_books's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Spice Rating: 🌶️ .5 / 5

Mad Honey is one of those books that sucks you in and just doesn't let go. I went into it not knowing much, and there were multiple times where I audibly gasped at this story. 

Olivia and her son, Asher, have been through hell and back. To escape Olivia's abusive ex-husband, the pair moved back to Olivia's childhood home in New Hampshire to take over her father's beekeeping business. Lily is a high school student who also needed a new start. She and her mother moved to New Hampshire to start over. Asher and Lily eventually cross paths at their school, and the two teenagers can't help but fall in love with each other. Olivia is so happy for her son, but one day, she gets a call from Asher: "Lily is dead." Of course, as Lily's boyfriend and the one who found her body, Asher is the number one suspect. Through a dual timeline and dual POV, we follow Lily through the past leading up to her death and Olivia as we watch Asher's trial. 

This novel surprised me in so many ways, and it really was such an amazing collaboration between the two authors. I listened to the author's note at the end and found out that Jodi Picoult wrote Olivia's POV while Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote Lily's POV, but I would have never known that from the way their writing styles complemented each other and blended together. It was such a unique story that centers around secrets. What secrets are that, secrets? And what secrets are ones that are private information that should only be shared by their owner? 

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ktdakotareads's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5


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lemons's review against another edition

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fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0


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kxtielouisexo's review against another edition

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3.0

enjoyable! i figured out the twist quite early on and felt like some parts of this book dragged (i did skip a lil bit here and there lol)

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rgs's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75


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torturedreadersdept's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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karlymarcy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75


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calliecachat's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I read this for book club. It was not at all what I was expecting. I found the ending rushed, lackluster, and hard to believe. I did really enjoy the structure of the story in the way it is told between multiple perspectives and varies in the timeline. 

Lily’s story reminded me so much of Amanda’s story in Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl. I think it did a good job of informing the reader about transgender people. It was, similar to Russo’s work, a story of a girl whose experience transitioning, medically speaking, was ideal so that she was able to “pass” easily in the eyes of others. I did appreciate Elizabeth’s remark that meeting one trans person means “meeting only one trans person” to highlight that not every experience is like Lily’s. That being said, I found Olivia’s conversation with Elizabeth to be superficial and forced for the sake of answer readers’ potential question's.
 

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nurse_who_readss's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Very heavy on social issues such as transgender identity and domestic abuse 

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lucyroberts's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5


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