Mad Honey
2022 • 464 pages
Ratings25
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings25
Average rating4.3
Olivia fled her abusive marriage to return to her hometown and take over the family beekeeping business when her son Asher was six. Now, impossibly, her baby is six feet tall and in his last year of high school, a kind, good-looking, popular ice hockey star with a tiny sprite of a new girlfriend. Lily also knows what it feels like to start over - when she and her mother relocated to New Hampshire it was all about a fresh start. She and Asher couldn't help falling for each other, and Lily feels happy for the first time. But can she trust him completely? Then Olivia gets a phone call - Lily is dead, and Asher is arrested on a charge of murder. As the case against him unfolds, she realises he has hidden more than he's shared with her. And Olivia knows firsthand that the secrets we keep reflect the past we want to leave behind - and that we rarely know the people we love well as we think we do.
Reviews with the most likes.
4.5 ⭐️ As usual, another great book from Jodi Picoult. I love that she had a co-author for this one. First, and I know, I know... “don't judge a book by it's cover”, but this has a beautiful cover. Even without the dust jacket, the shimmery red letters on the spine, beautiful. One negative is that I felt like I could tell which sections were primarily written by Jodi vs Jennifer, though not fully a negative because it did give some differentiation between the characters. I loved this dual POV from Olivia and Lily. They were so similar and we got to watch as Olivia realized that. I also thought the beekeeping/honey info was an interesting concept. And adding Jordan MacAfee to this book, ah perfect. I loved that. Very nearly a 5 star to me, but I compare everything to 19 minutes and this one did not have a shocking end to me. I felt like I knew what was going to happen and I wanted the build up to it to be a little more. Overall, though I really enjoyed and I can't wait to see if these two work together on more.
I enjoyed this book. I always enjoy Jodi Picoults way of making a very tough, current topic into an interesting humanizing story.
Took me a little while to get through this! Doesn't help that I'm back at work now! Not a fan of books that jump back and forward in time but it does make sense in this story as you need to learn Lily and Olivia's back stories.
I listened to this as an audiobook, and while I'm sure reading the book would have been great, the voice actors brought even more vulnerability and humanity to the characters. The chapters from Lily's point of view were so honest and authentic, you could tell they were written by someone with experience on the subject matter (i.e. Jennifer Finney Boylan). This was my first book by either of the authors but definitely not my last!
