Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult is amazing. just when i thought, i had figured her plot out, she manages to sneak in a surprise.

lacy houghton is a midwife, who brings lives into the world. she did not expect her son to take them away. but that's exactly what he did. one morning, peter houghton, a prey in the eyes of bullies, walked into his high school with guns instead of books and he killed ten people.

along with the rest of the shocked and grief-stricken town, Lacy is left wondering when her shy 17 year old boy turned into a monster. and was it her fault?

this book is really addictive. once you start reading it, you cannot stop. believe me. i read finish this book while having high fever. well, this is the first book themed school shooting that i have read. i don't really know whether there are other books but if they are anything like this, i would definitely read them. the way Jodi Picoult narrates the story is superb. it keeps jolting our curiousity nerves.

she keeps revealing incidents that might turn the flow of events upside down. i get really excited over books that have surprise endings, and this is one book which i love the ending. it was really unexpected. the words, sentences, phrases, everything is lovely. i love the way she writes and her tone in this novel.

this is my second read in the Jodi Picoult's collection and it excites me to read her other novels. any suggestions?

..........Salem Falls.............

OK. Jodi Picoult is a magnificent writer.

here is a short synopsis:

Jack St. Bride was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school - until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his career and reputation. Now, after a devastatingly public ordeal that left him with an eight-month jail sentence and no job, Jack resolves to pick up the pieces of his life. He takes a job washing dishes at Addie Peabody's diner and slowly starts to form a relationship with her in the quiet New England village of Salem Falls. But just when Jack thinks he has outrun his past, a quartet of teenage girls with a secret turn his world upside down once again, triggering a modern-day witch hunt in a town haunted by its own history.

Jodi Picoult has this magic in her writing that makes you want to keep reading this book. imagine, i read finish this book at 3.00am and it was worth choosing this book over sleep. it took me two days. and for that two days all i did was read read and read (except eat and bathe....heehehe). this book is unputdownable.seriously, if you are going to start reading this book make sure you don't have any paperwork or assignment due in a couple of days.

the character Jack St. Bride is my favourite. OK, jack is a little too-good-to-be-true sometimes. the author (i don't know how she does it) paints a vivid picture of the small quite town, Salem Falls, in our mind which makes you really want to live a simple life there. the antagonist Gillian Duncan makes us want to smother her to death with a pillow (a thought that came to me at 2.30am, that day)

overall, this was a great read and i recommend everyone out there to read this book.