Anyone who knows anything about me at all is fully aware of how much I love Jodi Picoult’s novels. She is one of my favourite authors and the launch of a new book is always an occasion to celebrate. When twitter pal and fellow book lover Wanda over at @YMCBookalicious asked if I’d like to participate in a Simon and Schuster twitter book club party I was wholeheartedly enthusiastic. Thanks Wanda! Anyways on to the review. Sing You Home is ultimately a book about love and family and the many different forms that takes. It has all the traditional Jodi Picoult elements: strong characters, ripped from the headlines type of plots, a court case, some grand philosphical battles, this time between church and state, gay rights, procreation as biology versus choice, as well as a small rumination on when life actually begins and a whole mashup of themes that drive you headlong towards the end of the book. Sing You Home also has a couple of surprises which I will not give away so I save the good stuff for you. The main character is Zoe Baxter, a music therapist, married with a family on the way. But issues of infertility, told with heartwrenching and great dramatic detail, drive larger rifts between husband and wife until they are no longer even wanting the same life goals. Picoult handles the infertility theme here with amazing grace and such emotion that let’s just say a couple of us in the recent on line book club revealed that we probably shouldn’t have been reading this book on the treadmill at the gym. I was not actually expecting a court case in this one and my chief complaint here is that the court battles in her books – although always well told – are predictable. I would love to see the next book happen entirely without relying on that as a plot. Zoe and Max inevitably end up living apart. Max, a slightly two-dimensional character and a recovering alcoholic, revisits his old wounds until he moves in with his zealous and wealthy older brother, also oddly struggling with infertility issues. Sing You Home comes with an interesting and creative supplement to the book, a CD of songs that act like a soundtrack to the book. The CD is folksy and peformed by Ellen Wilber. It is appropriate and clever given that the main character makes her living out of music. In the scenes where Zoe is using music as a breakthrough bridge between people who are grieving, or struggling in some way, and herself the therapist it is intriguing and educational to see how music can be used to reach remote corners of people’s hearts. There might have been a bit more detail or explanation woven in here because it is a unique and compelling vocation for a main character. Picoult is the author of 18 books. Many, like House Rules, Nineteen Minutes and My Sister’s Keeper, have been runaway best-sellers.

Sing You Home, by Jodi Picoult, Simon and Schuster Canada, 2011, 466 pages, $28 US and $32 Canadian.

I give this one a $$$$ out of $$$$$.

I received this book for free from Simon and Schuster Canada. This in no way impact my opinion.

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