Book 351: The Pact
So, my main problem with this book was that it read almost exactly like Nineteen Minutes, a Picoult book I read in October. Actually, I guess it’s the other way around, since The Pact was published before Nineteen Minutes. Either way, the characters and scenarios felt like total copies of each other, from parents in denial to teens insisting on testifying in their own trials. In fact, I think that some of the dialogue might have been copied verbatim.
I felt like I read the same book twice, with slightly different scenarios. One is a school shooting, the other is a teen suicide. Or is it a murder? That’s the crux of the book, but I found myself getting pretty bored with it, very fast. On the other hand, Picoult is a pretty prolific writer, so I feel like I now know the plots and characters in all of her books. I could review, say Mercy, or maybe Harvesting the Heart, without actually having to read either.
Apparently Picoult is also a huge fan of flipping back and forth between “then” and “now,” which is a narrative device which seemed to be really trendy in the 1990s. I, however, am not really a fan of this style, with the exception of a few notable books. I also note that she apparently isn’t a fan of strong female characters, and that she loves the thought of white male lawyers with attractive black female partners. And sexual abuse. And sympathetic English teachers.
I’m kind of surprised that anyone tried to ban this book. After all, it’s probably a copy of one of her earlier works, so what makes this more objectionable than, say, Picture Perfect?
Demographics:
The Pact, by Jodi Picoult. Published 1998, 407 pages. Fiction.