I Read This Book So You Don't Have To

12:41 PM


This is an open letter to Jodi Picoult regarding her new book Leaving Time. My only advice is that if you read it, drink a shot each time the phrase temporal secretions is used. It won't make the book better, but you won't care by the time you get to the ridiculous ending.


Jodi, Jodi, Jodi...can we talk?
I have never written a review on Amazon before, but your newest book pushed my buttons enough that I did. I gave this one star on Amazon only because I couldn't leave a zero star. I also gave it two days of my time that I will never get back. The issue here is that I know you are a good writer. I even forgave you for the whale and wolf books. If you weren't such a talented writer, then I wouldn't care.
I have been a huge fan of many of your past books. I couldn't put down My Sister's KeeperNineteen Minutes, and Plain Truth. Even your more recent book, The Storyteller, was told from an interesting perspective that at least didn't make it a waste of time.

I put my request on this book at the library early so I would get one of the first copies. I figured that after putting out several mediocre books in the past few years you were due for another great one. Thank the Lord I didn't pay for it! I'm not sure how it has received such high ratings on Amazon unless these people have never read your good books before. I wonder if those who gave it five stars have ever read any good books.

The majority of this book was like reading a very uninteresting National Geographic magazine. It got where every time an elephant had a stressful situation I was thinking, "Now comes the part when she secretes oily stuff from her temporal glands and pees herself." I realize you were intent on presenting the "humanness" of elephants, but as an animal lover I've seen these traits in most animals. As a matter of fact, if you were a farm girl you would know that many of the "humanized" characteristics you used to gain the reader's empathy for elephants are the exact same herd characteristics displayed by cattle and other farm animals. And I bet you eat them. If it was only supposed to be metaphoric, then it missed the mark.

Parts of this book were so boring and redundant that I actually began skimming the majority of the parts told in the voice of your central character, Alice (and I never do that). Even after falling asleep twice while reading (thanks, for the naps, btw), I was determined to get to the ending because I had faith you were going to justify that my two days of reading about elephant secretions were worth it. Your token twist ending was that it was a total cop out. I was like, what-the-what??? Did you really think giving us Ghost (1990) and Sixth Sense (1999) was inventive? (Hint: It's been done already!!!)

Jodi, take a break. Throw away that tired outline that you have used for a decade. We've all figured it out by now and your books are the same story with a different social/political soapbox . In this case, it was a different animal, but it was even worse than your whale and wolf books. The real social tragedy is that a tree died for this book.

I know you are capable of writing something that will once again blow my socks off.

I'll wait.

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