Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan, received from Jonathan Ball Publishers, is among my favourites from the Picoult stable. Alternatingly heart-pounding and heart-breaking, this seamless collaboration between two best-selling authors weaves together the journeys of two protagonists, resulting in a suspenseful but also thought-provoking masterpiece sure to stoke lively book club discussions around authenticity, identity and gender.
Ambitious though it was (the novel is a nail-biting murder mystery, a riveting court case drama, a love story, and a family saga all wrapped into one), Mad Honey hit all the notes, and the result is a veritable symphony. In typical Picoult tradition, the research was exhaustive, while the knowledge and expertise displayed by the two authors about the variety of subjects covered make this one of my top reads for this year.
Olivia McAfee, one of the narrating protagonists, is a single mother of eighteen-year-old hockey-playing Asher. She moves back to her hometown, Adams, in New Hampshire, to escape an abusive marriage and to take over her late father’s beekeeping business. Olivia is a dedicated apiarist, and I was fascinated to learn more about the science, history and myths surrounding bees (my husband and I keep some hives on our farm, but I have very little to do with their maintenance, nor do I know much about their mechanics). I also thought the apiculture element was an excellent supplement to the novel and complementary to the authors’ message.
The second voice belongs to Lily Campanello, daughter of Ava, a forest ranger and single mother. The pair relocates to Adams, where Lily enrols for her final year of high school, and both hope for a fresh start. When Lily and Asher meet, they promptly fall in love, and Lily is finally happy…for a while…
At the novel's core are two strong single mothers who sacrifice their dreams to protect and ensure their children’s safety and find themselves tested to the limit as a fraught courtroom drama unfolds. Through excellent and authentic narration, we learn about the various tangible and intangible impacts of domestic violence, the consequences of the secrets we keep, and how true character comes to the fore in moments of crisis.
Mad Honey came about in lockdown when Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan decided to collaborate after Jenny tweeted about a dream in which she and Jodi co-wrote a novel (Twitter is good for something, after all, who knew?). They wrote alternate chapters, editing each other’s work as they went along. It is clear that they spent much time plotting the storyline and developing the characters, the evidence being an original, powerful and gripping novel that explores multiple themes expertly, including the perils of secrets, the inevitability of our pasts, and the risks people will take to become their true selves.
There is so much more I’d like to say about Mad Honey, but I’ll leave it there for fear of spoiling anything. Nevertheless, I envy those yet to sink their teeth into Picoult’s latest fare.
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