Book Review: Lone Wolf, Jodi Picoult

Book reviews don't tend to be my most read posts of them all but I thought I'd stick with them this year to keep a check on what I've read throughout the year..

I've read a good handful of Jodi Picoult's books now and she's become one of my favourite authors over the last year or so. She's not quite the chick lit author I'm used to, and instead writes some pretty gritty real life stuff that really grips me in. I've noticed a theme with almost all the books I've read - they consist of either a murder or death or some sort, whether through illness or innocence. They sound pretty depressing but trust me, they're not. If anything they sometimes make you do a reality check and realise what's important in life.

My recent read was Lone Wolf. This took me several attempts to get into and is probably my least favourite out the lot so far. It's probably the furthest from reality from what I've read of her, although I wouldn't put it past anyone to have tried this at some point!

The book is about a father, an animal conservationist, who ends up living alongside wolves, quite literally. He eats what they eat, and even begins to act like them. He lives, sleeps and breathes to be one of the pack. Subsequently he loses his wife (which happened 'outside' of the book) and is left with only his daughter by his side. One night they are both involved in a serious car accident which leaves him brain damaged. His son comes to visit him from Thailand where he went after having an argument with his father 6 years previous. His son is in charge of making the final decision whether his fathers life support machine gets switched off or lives, but with 24hr intense care. Conflict arises between him and his younger sister and it goes to court. Here, a lot more of his fathers past gets unraveled that his sister was unaware of. The tough decision is finally made regarding his fathers life.

I liked how each chapter was written from each characters perspective and flicked between usually 5 of the main characters, so it was easy to keep track of the story. The majority of the fathers perspective was written from his life as a wolf, and I began to find this fairly repetitive as the book went on, to the point where I was almost skipping those pages because I found them un-necessary.

There was only one factor that kept me gripped right through till the end, and that was the incident surrounding the car crash. The book deliberately held a secret back but kept making references to it which just got me wanting to know more.

A different read from her usual content but not one that I'd score high.