steelingstephanie 's review for:

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

3.0

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I am not into this book - the way we worked through the timeline was incredibly distracting and, honestly, kind of infuriating. I found myself hurriedly reading just to finish. As always, Jodi Picoult's writing is beautiful and incredibly well-researched, and I loved her explanation of the research and history at the end of the book - I know I'll be re-reading and citing just that, and recommending it to others, and honestly that's a big part of why this gets three stars. I was also impressed by the lack of a courtroom (although there was a lawyer and a few interactions with her, of course), which is pretty par for the course for Jodi's books. I know what she was trying to do, and I appreciate the subtle ways all of these lives intersected, and the few secrets/reveals, but again, it was ultimately frustrating and distracting. I also don't know that some of the backstories were needed, or to the level they were needed - every time we had insight into Izzy's life, we were reminded of how poor she was. Like, beat over the head by it.

I clearly have a lot of feelings about this book, they're clearly pretty jumbled, but all in all: well-researched, an interesting and timely topic, but overall really frustrating and not my favorite by a long shot.