Mercy

I just started the book "Mercy" by Jodi Picoult. Its interesting but I don't think that it is her best book. Ive read a lot of her other books and I think that this one really just doesn't compare. That doesn't mean that it is not interesting. I think that the author challenged herself when writing this one, its a murder mystery where you already know who the villain is. The only problem is that the villain killed out of mercy.

Its kind of hard to wrap your mind around but here goes, He killed his wife by smothering her with a pillow, which he did because he loved her so much, because she asked him to, because she was in constant pain, because she had cancer and she was going to die in 2 years anyway. So the reason he killed his wife was because he loved her too much to bear to see her in pain and wanted to end her suffering. This part of the book was really interesting, it was the other half of the story that kind of ruined it for me. While this murder trial is going on there is a man named Cameron, he is the cousin of the murderer (James or Jamie). Cameron is cheating on his wife with a woman he just met named Mia. I don't like the way this book is set up because it doesn't fit together.

One of the things that I tend to love about Jodi Picoult's books is that they are a bunch of complex plots and characters that intricately twist around each other but still make sense. Usually at least some of the characters are relatives but there's always some other one with their own story. Usually that story finds  way to fit in with all the other ones, it fits, makes sense, and seems to belong there. Sadly this book didn't have that great connection. The other person in this book is Mia, the other woman. She is an interesting character and she has an intriguing back story but she doesn't really relate at all to the main scheme of things. She is just a pretty woman who happened to catch a married man's eye.

Maybe if the book were centered around something different then it would make more sense. I think maybe the book should have been called "History". That would make sense because of a couple different reasons. One, Mia and Cameron met once in Italy before Cameron got married so they have history, the reflective part of the book is about the history of a Scottish leader(Cameron's father), part of the book is about Jamie's life before he killed his wife, and the actual court case is "making history" because of how odd it is.I think that that would have fixed the issues that I really had with this book.