Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
Do you know how excited I was to read Mad Honey? This was on my list of the most anticipated books to read for October! Last year, I read Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult, and I loved it!
Olivia McAfee is starting over in her childhood home. She is reeling from her divorce, fleeing an abusive ex-husband.
For once, Olivia is finally getting her feet under her. Her beekeeping business is finally turning a profit, and her teenage son is thriving. However, her world crumples when her son, Asher, is accused of murdering his girlfriend.
Is Asher just like his father? Or did someone else commit this heinous crime?
In Mad Honey, there are a lot of things to like. The prose is really spot on. It is highly readable with short sentences and short paragraphs. When I started to read this book, it felt like a breath of fresh air, and I really looked forward to reading it.
Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan have mastered character development. These characters are not black and white, all good or all bad. Even while depicting the abusive relationship, they showed the loving moments as well as the more challenging aspects of the relationship. Some characters aren’t comfortable sharing their past. Some are still trying to come to terms with their own relationship to the past.
Mad Honey is also an excellent pick for a book club. There are a lot of hot topics in this book, a great tool to start some engaging conversations.
As far as the murder mystery, I really enjoyed this aspect of Mad Honey. At the beginning of the book, you start off with Asher as a suspect. However, as the book progresses, you discover that there are quite a few people who have motive.
As much as I enjoyed this book, it is about 100 pages too long. Some parts are repetitious, where we are either told some facts several times or an event is mentioned and then told in much greater detail later. Mad Honey tries to be too many things and covers off too many relationships and topics, crams in too many factoids.
The ending is also extremely abrupt.
Overall, Mad Hone is a very interesting read with a twist that I didn’t see coming.
*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.