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ashley729 's review for:
The Book of Two Ways
by Jodi Picoult
This book broke my heart. And then instead of putting it back together it put it in a blender and now I am sitting with SO many conflicting feelings and a weirdly sharpened knowledge of Egyptology. There were copious historical references but somehow they worked and I found myself enjoying learning snippets about archeology and Egyptian excavations. Back to the story — SO many emotions all resulting in a weird sense of disdain for our protagonist Dawn. The storyline jumps around a little bit from 15 years ago when she was a PhD student to now when she is raising a teenager with a new career path as a death doula (something I didn’t know existed before this story). After a near fatal crash she is given the chance to answer some of the what ifs she has about her life and she seizes the opportunity. We explore past loves and how things may have changed had life worked differently with the infinite possibilities based on decisions we make (or don’t). Lots of lines caused me to pause and reflect, and that was lovely, but towards the end I was cynical of our heroine and her intentions and ability to hurt as many people and be as selfish as she was (which took away an entire star in my opinion). Don’t let the history and complicated terms scare you — they actually ended up being super interesting and will probably be my takeaways from the story. What a wild start to the year!