AUDIO BOOK REVIEW: A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult
Release Date: October 2, 2018
Publisher: Random House Audio
Format: Audio
Length: 13 hours 3 minutes
Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Genre: Womens Fiction
Buy: Audible | Kindle
Synopsis:
The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center - a women's reproductive health services clinic - its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.
After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his 15-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.
But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters: A nurse who calms her own panic in order to save the life of a wounded woman. A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before. A pro-life protester, disguised as a patient, who now stands in the cross hairs of the same rage she herself has felt. A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy. And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard.
Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, this is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day.
One of the most fearless writers of our time, Jodi Picoult tackles a complicated issue in this gripping and nuanced novel. How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry? What does it mean to be a good parent? A Spark of Light will inspire debate, conversation...and, hopefully, understanding.
Review:
I love Jodi Picoult and I'm surprised she hasn't tackled this topic before. I chose to get this as an audio book and I'm sorry about that. I really struggled with the fact that this book was written backwards. Its starts at the end and travels back to what brought all of these people to the places they are in the clinic with a man who is threatening to kill them all.
I think this book would have been better in written format instead of audio. It was just hard to keep track of the backward narration. I also struggled to stay focused when it seems that every character went over some of the same things over and over again making it repetitive. Some people have said the characters were more like caricatures and I will say as a pro-choice woman that I do agree that the pro-life character in the book was a bit hokey.
Overall I was left bored and lost with this book which is so rare when reading a Picoult book.
I think this book would have been better in written format instead of audio. It was just hard to keep track of the backward narration. I also struggled to stay focused when it seems that every character went over some of the same things over and over again making it repetitive. Some people have said the characters were more like caricatures and I will say as a pro-choice woman that I do agree that the pro-life character in the book was a bit hokey.
Overall I was left bored and lost with this book which is so rare when reading a Picoult book.
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