A review by irisandfoxglove
Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan, Jodi Picoult

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was a beautiful, heart wrenching book. I thought the way the chapters were set up was so well thought out and poignant, especially with the epigraph at the beginning. I’d recommend people check the content warnings first before reading.

I loved the moments we got of Ava.

Her planning and forethought for the picnic wrecked me, it was so sweet.

For what we found out about the “day of” by the end of the book,

man, fucking Maya. Based on her telling, it was clearly an accident. Why didn’t she call 911? Or come clean? If I was Asher, I would never forgive her for that. But, I accept her actions as believable. And I’m glad we got to know what happened. I also so fell for Dirk as a red herring.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Outing, Suicide attempt, Transphobia, Bullying, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, and Child abuse

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Gaslighting, Deadnaming, Death, Emotional abuse, and Violence

Minor: Sexual harassment

The transphobia is not endorsed by the main characters of this book and is thoroughly dismantled. The suicidal attempt describes the method factually, and the emotions graphically, but only describes the set up in detail and not the actual attempt.

the method involved blades, and the character describes several times being triggered by knives and blades elsewhere in the story

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