A review by court_caitlin
Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult

3.0

Ummmm. Yeah, I don’t think I was a fan. I gave it three stars because her writing and prose is good. Great character development. The problem was that there were too many characters and I didn’t really care enough about any of them. We get vague references to past emotions and events but nothing clear. I find it exceptionally problematic to trivialize rape survivors. False rape accusations are so rare that to pretend it could happen to someone twice in the course of 18 months is ridiculous. Also the girls’ motives made NO SENSE. I would have been willing to suspend disbelief for the double false rape accusations if Gillian had a solid reason for being interested in Jack and being upset with him. They literally had ONE conversation by a Dumpster and that was enough to make her try to ruin his life? Very confusing. I’m still not sure why the other girls were interested In practicing witch craft in the first place. I’ve read much better novels with twist endings about the accuser. Also I have no idea why the story ended the way it did. Great, Charlie is a rapist and so is Amos and oh yeah Amos is consistently raping his daughter, but don’t worry Addie and Jack are happy? Also Addie sure got over her daughter in a hurry considering she was mourning her for literally years. Overall, not great and hard to buy into.