Synopsis:
When is the right time to be who you always were?
From the bestselling authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan comes a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.
The most compelling, challenging and contemporary novel you will read this year – and which will start conversations we need to have around authenticity, identity and gender.
Olivia fled her abusive marriage to return to her hometown and take over the family beekeeping business when her son Asher was six. Now, impossibly, her baby is six feet tall and in his last year of high school, a kind, good-looking, popular ice hockey star with a tiny sprite of a new girlfriend.
Lily also knows what it feels like to start over – when she and her mother relocated to New Hampshire it was all about a fresh start. She and Asher couldn’t help falling for each other, and Lily feels happy for the first time. But can she trust him completely?
Then Olivia gets a phone call – Lily is dead, and Asher is arrested on a charge of murder. As the case against him unfolds, she realises he has hidden more than he’s shared with her. And Olivia knows firsthand that the secrets we keep reflect the past we want to leave behind - and that we rarely know the people we love well as we think we do.
Review:
I did enjoy this book but I wanted to enjoy it so much more. The first 1/4 or so of the book I flew through and was loving the characters and the pace and then it seemed to just fall of a cliff for me.
Controversially perhaps….It felt like, to me, that every current topical issue was being shoehorned in to stay relevant and it just didn’t work out for me.
I’ve gone with a 3/5 rating here as it did have lots of good bits. The writing was good and the characters strong – I enjoyed all the bee references, I just felt it could have been more!
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