Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: Sometimes, when I'm reading a book, I start writing the reivew before I finish reading. I only had a few sentences put down for this book by the time I got close to the end, which is good, because I had to scrap them. In other words, this book is not what it seems. It's even better.
After surviving a plane crash, the airline offers to fly Dawn wherever she wants to go. Does she choose to return to her daughter and husband of fifteen years, or does she choose to find her lost love, the man she thought of as the plane was going down?
Thus we are introduced to the theory of parallel universes, and so, the chapters alternate, beginning with Dawn choosing to return to Egypt to explore the what-if she left behind. In the other chapters, Dawn returns to her home in Boston, and the familiar struggles of marriage and motherhood. Or is that what's going on? There's a twist (don't expect me to give it away!) and in typical Picoult fashion, there are no clear right answers.
Picoult is not coy about what she's setting up. Dawn's husband is a physicist who explores just that topic. As a graduate student in Egyptology, Dawn's thesis was on The Book of Two Ways, an ancient Egyptian text that essentially posited that, after death, one's soul can take one of two routes, but will end up in the same place, feasting with Osiris. But sometimes, Picoult gets a little heavy-handed, such as having one of Dawn's clients face a very similar dilemma, and having Dawn learn a lot about her own life as she works things through with her client.
In Picoult's hands, even this last doesn't seem like much of a flaw, and if it is one, it's easily forgiven for the pleasure of the rest of the book. This is the kind of book that you want to read again as soon as you've finished it, that will make you want to go out and learn all about hieroglyphics, and that you'll recommend to everyone you know.
FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.
