Leaving Time

It’s not my usual genre. I actually enjoyed it. Good twist

I wasn't really grabbed by the book until halfway through, and then I couldn't put it down! The ending was a total shocker, I literally had my jaw hit the floor when reading. The only thing I didn't like was the excessive elephant information. In the beginning, I pretty much just skipped the Alice chapters because it didn't seem relevant to the story. Only about halfway through do her chapters start to actually tell a story. Overall very good, but wish there was less elephant stuff. Interesting information, but I wanted to read a story, not an elephant documentary.

One cannot doubt Picoult's abilities to give us *real* characters whom we seem to know and love right off the bat. Immediate best friends! And no one out there in popular fiction does more or better research. You always learn lots reading Jodi Picoult. Especially so this time around - grief rituals of elephant herds? Burned out private eyes? Psychics who really believe they are? And yet another of Picoult's quintessential kids? Wow! I quite literally couldn't put it down! I finished 'Leaving Time' in just under 30 hours and hated coming to its close. Which brings me to my single complaint - the end. A cop out. As if she just got sick of the story and quit writing. No surprise, no explosion, no satisfying wrap up. Just, well . . . the end. Now mind you, I cannot imagine any other way I'd want this book to end, any sort of surprise conclusion that would have made sense for these characters in this situation. But then I don't make the megabucks manipulating the language to write satisfying endings. Incidentally, this was my first Picoult novel. Since then I've read six more and am delighted to find I've another fourteen to go. And she's fairly young and still writing? YEAH!!!