I was so excited when NetGalley allowed me early access to this Jodi Picoult (one of my favorite authors) book. And it pains me to say that it was a big disappointment.

There is way too much information regarding Egyptology, hieroglyphics, archeology, burial chambers and more. I think Ms. Picoult had one eye in a college textbook as she wrote The Book of Two Ways.

The characters are painstakingly dreary. Even Wyatt as arrogant as he is, is dreary, and Dawn spends much of the book lamenting the road not taken. The story itself is flat, and it was hard to stay interested. I did, however, find the concept of death doula very intriguing.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

When Dawn Edelstein's plane goes down, what flashes through her mind isn't her husband and daughter; it is Wyatt, a man she left behind in Egypt 15 years ago when she had to quit their Egyptology graduate program at Yale. She has a good life now with her husband Brian, her daughter, and her work as a death doula. However, surviving the plane crash makes her wonder what she missed out on by having to walk away from Egypt and Wyatt. When the airline offers transportation to the survivors to go wherever they want, Dawn has to choose between going home to her current life and family or seeing what might have been in Egypt. The story jumps back and forth between the "Land" timeline in Egypt and the "Water" timeline in Boston.

Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors, but this book didn't capture me the way her books usually do. That is not to say that it isn't a good book, because it definitely is. I just had trouble connecting to Dawn. Usually in Picoult's books,we have a handful of narrators providing different angles from the story. I can see why that wouldn't have worked for this story, but I did miss seeing the different angles. I did think it was neat that Picoult knew she needed to write a story about Egyptology after learning about it while her son was majoring in it.

Jodi Picoult is one of my very favorite authors and this book does not disappoint. Dawn Edelstein is on a plane home when there is an emergency crash landing. As the plane hurtles toward earth, Dawn does not think about her husband of fifteen years, or her teenage daughter. Rather, she thinks of the life she left behind years before, and her first love, Wyatt, whom she also left behind. Dawn begins to question her life choices, and wonder how she ended up with such a different life than she imagined. She has spent her whole life taking care of others, but when is it time for what SHE wants? The book grapples with the question of what makes us who we are. How much control do we have over our own lives? Is it ever too late to back and fulfill our lost dreams? I loved how nuanced the characters are - good people who are flawed and struggle with their own imperfection.

Another winner from Jodi Piccoult! The Book of Two Ways keeps you reading to find out what will happen next. I liked the way the story was set up, switching between stories. Dawn, is an Egyptologist working as a grad student in Egypt. She falls in love with Wyatt, but has to leave abruptly when her mom calls to say she is dying. After leaving, Dawn doesn't return to Egypt for 15 years. The book then tells the story of Dawn reuniting with Wyatt, while alternating with chapters of her life with her husband Brian and daughter Meret. In the end Dawn must choose between the two men.

OH MAN, I really wanted to like this more than I did. The story of Dawn who has studied Egyptology and spent a good amount of time at dig sites in Egypt as a grad student. Then life happens and she must end her studies and head for home.

This story is told in different timelines and well, it is quite confusing at times. I was never sure if we were in a specific time period or if Dawn was reminiscing or if I had fallen asleep and was dreaming. The time warps just did not work for me.

When we are in Egypt at the dig site, the book reads like a text book. Lots of information overload and lots of Egyptian names and hieroglyphs that are hard to understand and make sense.

I could go on, but I really didn't want this review to be negative, because I did enjoy the basic story. I just did not particularly enjoy the delivery of this one.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Ballentine books for this advanced readers copy. This book is due to release in September 2020.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House - Ballentine for this ARC.

Where do I even start?! Jodi Picoult has long been a favorite author of mine. She has always written with such heart & emotion that I find myself sobbing while reading most of her works. Sometimes happy tears, but usually tears from the sadness that her characters frequently exude. Each one has a heart breaking story that comes to light with such detail, that you find yourself feeling everything right along with them.

This story is no different. Without giving away spoilers, bc I hate that, It is essentially two books within one. A story so magically crafted that you find yourself wondering if they are alternate universes or one in the same. In true Jodi style, the topic at hand, Egyptology, has been so well researched that you think that the author herself lived this life with the vast knowledge that appears in each chapter. How she is able to create such stunning stories is beyond me.

Do yourself a favor and preorder this book. You won’t be disappointed.

I loved this book. It's a great book to read during this stressful time - it will allow you to relax and enjoy and laugh and love. It will not add to your stress or anxiety level. The story is fantastic - and it shows that when push comes to shove, priorities will be obvious and will be acted on. You will cheer for the heroine! Not only was this a book that left me feeling good about me and about life, I learned a lot. I learned about death doulas - who I didn't even know existed, but now I know I want one when my time comes. I learned so much about Egyptology - which is totally fascinating. These did not distract from the book but rather added so much to it.

Take some time for you. Give yourself a gift. Get this book and devour it. Enjoy it. Escape our crazy world for a few hours.

Jodi Picoult has done it again. Nothing well ever top her Leaving Time for me, but this one gets pretty close, because deep inside of me is a 4th Grader obsessed with Ancient Egypt longing to be free. The Book of Two Ways is definitely more women's fiction-y than some of her other books, because of its emphasis on alternate timelines and relationships--but it's packed like a textbook of information and I cried...multiple times.

Dawn is a death doula, someone who helps people transition to death, make final plans, grant final wishes, etc. At the beginning of the book, Dawn survives a plane crash and enters her own "book of two ways"--on one path, she goes back to Boston, to her husband and daughter and the marital tensions she was running away from. On another, she goes back to Egypt, where she worked as a graduate student studying ancient Egypt and falling for a man she hasn't seen since she left to take care of her dying mother fifteen years ago.  As we alternate between "land" and "water", Dawn re-finds her love in a new tomb in Egypt and meets a new client, Win, who changes what she wants with her own life and getting her own answers. Of course, being a Jodi Picoult novel, there's a twist towards the end, and the timelines get more crossed than you might imagine. 

This book is SO heavy on information, but I weirdly loved it. Picoult DOES HER RESEARCH folks, and this book is one of the best examples of that so far. There's Ancient Egypt, death meditations, hieroglyphics, alternative universe physics, plane crashes, brain surgery, and the like. I never thought I was the kind of person who cried about death--I feel like I have a healthy relationship with it and it doesn't effect me that much--but wow, I cried a few times during this book. There is a memory of a dog death, and that made me curl up with my cat and sob into her fur for awhile, which I'm sure she appreciated. There's romance and drama and Ancient Egyptian tombs and some great lines about what it means to fall in love and love someone for a long time. I found myself highlighting a lot! Dawn isn't an inherently likeable character, which I love, but you are enraptured by her story, her relationships, and her interests. I loved the raw honesty of her relationship with her daughter Meret, and I know romance lovers are going to LOVE Wyatt Armstrong. 

There's so much this book has to offer and I can't wait for more people to read it! I was so excited when I heard Picoult say she was writing a book about Ancient Egypt, and this book delivers!

This book was brilliant. Brilliant in a way that it should also come with a warning telling you that you will have to go into the depths of your brain to understand some of it. Quantum physics. Egyptology. Jodi Picoult did some major research to publish this brilliant book, so props to her! I have to admit I was a little lost at the beginning of the book because the extent of knowledge on the two subjects were so prominent and vast and spread far beyond my comprehension. However, once I started to understand it and we got to know the characters more, I was hooked! She had me falling in love and empathizing with characters that weren't even the main ones. You know a good book when it makes you cry and this one got me in my feels! The few curveballs towards the end were also so brilliant and I couldn't have imagined the story ending any other way.
This is a 4.5 star only because the beginning had me wondering if I was going to be able to get into the rest of the book if I didn't quite understand the quantum physics (mostly) and Egyptology.

Thank you to Netgalley, Random House Publishing, and Jodi Picoult for the advanced copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Who said women’s fiction is light and fluffy? Certainly not anyone who has read Jodi Picoult’s latest release, The Book of Two Ways. There is an actual ancient Egyptian coffin text from whence the title of Picoult’s novel. Dawn, the protagonist, was something of an expert in the artifact while in Yale graduate school studying Egyptology. The book depicted both a water route and a land route from this world to the afterlife. The theme of “two ways” echoes throughout the novel.

We all muse about the “path not taken” when -- at pivotal moments in life -- we choose one option over another. What if we had decided differently? In this case, Dawn wonders what might have happened if she’d married her grad school crush, Wyatt, a sort of Indiana Jones; instead of her steady physicist husband, Brian? What if she had stayed in the field of Egyptology instead of becoming a “death doula,” assisting clients as they prepare for the ultimate transition? The theme is repeated in Brian’s world of quantum mechanics where particles rotate two ways at once. The narrative shifts between Egypt with Wyatt’s world of archeological digs and Boston with marriage to Brian and her doula practice.

Along the way, the reader receives a generous helping of hieroglyphics (how will this be captured on audiobook?!), quantum mechanics (over my head) and the death doula industry (fascinating). The author definitely put many hours of research into this story; however, at times, the level of detail slows down the pacing.

I have read all of Picoult’s books, and I have to say that this one is not among my favorites. Nevertheless, there is much here for book clubs to discuss. The ending will definitely engender sharp differences of opinion among readers. I was left feeling unsatisfied, but others will love it. This book is best not read in solitude; readers will want to talk about it afterward.

I normally love a Jodi Picoult book but I just couldn't with this one. I was lost in the Egypt scenario and the detail that ensued. Some chapters had me hopeful and then I was thrown into another chapter that read like the encyclopedia. It just wasn't for me, I honestly struggled to finish this book. I'll definitely look forward to Jodi Picoult's next read as I'm usually her biggest fan.

Dawn, a death doula, finds herself with a near death experience that makes her realize that it’s not her life that flashes before her eyes, but one single person that causes her to question every decision she’s made in the last 15 years. As her story unfolds to follow “The Book of Two Ways,” she is both simultaneously in Boston and Egypt, fixing her marriage and uncovering her past. As the story seats back and forth, Dawn’s journey is plagued by never ending questions of her past and future decisions. While heavy on the Egyptian history, the story of Dawn and her own personal journey is one that will year at your heart and make you question your decisions.

As a long term fan of Jodi Picoult, I was thrilled to get the opportunity to read her latest novel prior to publication. However, this one left me with mixed thoughts. While I liked the two opposing stories and the exploration of how one can choose multiple paths in life and often wonder what if they made a different choice, I was overwhelmed by the ancient Egyptian backstory and folklore. At times it seemed like I was almost reading a nonfiction text about the subject matter. It is very clear that Picoult has done her research and it does tie into the whole message of the novel, but I found myself wanting to skip the facts and get to the actual story. I appreciated the twist at the end but unsure of how I feel about how we were left not getting all of the answers. I will continue to read Picoult in the future, this just happened to not be one of my favorites.

Jodi Picoult is a star at grabbing your attention early on in her books. This is the case with The Book of Two Ways. We’re immediately drawn into an interesting story of the paths we take in life and the ones we didn’t ... and the big question of if we would do something different if we had a second chance.

The main character, Dawn, had a lifelong fascination with all things Eqyptian and while in graduate school, meets Wyatt, a British man who shares her interest, but in a haughty and competitive way. Their initial meeting was frosty and that continues for some time, through school and field trips to Egypt. Life intervenes for Dawn and the path she takes is quite different than she planned, until she has an opportunity to take a second look.

You always go into reading Ms. Picoult’s books expecting a tremendous amount of detail and she is perhaps one of the leading fiction authors in conducting thorough research. Sometimes it’s subjects you’re interested in and other times, it’s not. In this book, she immerses the reader into Egypt (history, culture, rituals and modern day life) and physics. I’m not really interested in either subject, but found myself drawn into the details of Egyptian history and culture (physics...not so much).

At its heart, this is another wonderful book by Ms. Picoult about life, love, family and choices and is well worth reading. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the opportunity to read The Book of Two Ways in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Ballantine Books , Netgalley and Jodi Picoult for the opportunity to read this arc edition in exchange for an honest review.

In general I tend to remember the endings of books and how the book left me feeling. Quickly I forget how slowly the story developed or sometimes even how it started... when it's a really good book. I'm a little torn about this book. I find Ms. Picoult tends to deliver most of her books in that fashion, drawing you in and making you feel like part of the story. That wow moment that grabs you and keeps your interest to the end. With this book I had to look back on my thoughts and consider more than just that one ah ha moment.
This book travels back and forth from Boston to Egypt with a tenuous love triangle including a child. It's messy and complicated and painful. I've concluded that I liked this book ... was it my favorite book by Jodi Picoult? No, but I did enjoy it enough to give it 4 stars. Initially, I felt like she was trying too hard with her Egyptian research, putting in too many facts about Egypt and it's history, loosely tying it to the main character's current story of being a Death Doula, which was very interesting by itself.
On a side note, the conversations between our MC, Dawn and her patients are like beautiful lyrics in a song. I imagine myself in those situations and I could never respond in such perfect language. It's simply exquisite! Writing about the timing in conversations and responses are impressive, like poety. But I digress... This is basically a love story started in the past and a current relationship hanging by a thread. Our main character us then forced to choose between them, causing pain to someone either way. It is well thought out, developed, researched but I didn't Love it, it fell a little flat in the end.
The strengths of this book are Picoult's writing and insight into relationships. Weakness would be the excessive details about Egyptian history. I could see her feeling the need to develop such detail , but I felt like I was reading two books, not a book about two ways.
I recommend this book for fans of Contemporary Fiction, Chick Lit, Romance and Historical Fiction.

I was caught up in this narrative. First of all, the research was amazing and I learned so much. But as the author delves into an examination of choices we make and what could have been was fascinating. The surprise ending was spot-on. What choice would you make?

Jodi P has Hit this one out of the park with this one. The long standing but star crossed relationship between the two main characters is well done. However, With a surprise ending.
If you enjoy history, the secondary story of the people and customs of ancient Egypt of will be extremely interesting.. The story line is well thought out and paced.
I give it 5 stars.
Well done!!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

what if you could go back to a life you loved and pick up where you left off..what would you do go back to your beloved family or finish what you started in the past? Jody Picoult is wonderful.

I have always enjoyed Jodi Picoult’s writing and this book proves no different. I found the idea of the book fascinating but did get a bit mired down in the more technical Egyptology sections. As always, she gets to the heart of human relationships and the complexities that lie within. Thank you for allowing me to read this advanced copy.

WOW! This novel is about DEATH... and believe me that’s an understatement! I was never a fan of Jodi Picoult until her book Small Great Things. That raised my esteem for her craft and subject matter. Although she has written twenty four books on various themes, this one resonated with me more than any of the others. I loved it. I was looking forward to reading this galley of her newest. It begins with a clash of cymbals or should I say a crash.. airplane that is. From there it hurls forward with urgency as the main character Dawn, a death doula, flies off to Egypt. Death doula? I guess you were as in the dark as I was when I came upon this job description. A death doula aids something who is dying like a doula aids a birthing mother. The research Picoult must have accomplished for this novel was prodigious. The explanations of the Egyptians and their death practices and how the hieroglyphics are deciphered had my head spinning. In addition, the physics theories expounded are very difficult to follow. The novel alternates with the present digs in Egyptian tombs and the prior one thirteen years ago. Of course there is sex and romance and the relationships are complicated.. more like a romance novel. Perhaps because we are suffering a pandemic and death is in the news twenty four seven, I found the subject matter very depressing. The culture of the ancient Egyptians focused on the afterlife but their death preparations are so detailed by Picoult that they become overwhelming. The concurrent plot of ministering to dying patients by Dawn is hard to witness. I recognize the brilliance of the author’s premise and her literary expertise, but I had to put the novel down several times to avoid the difficult themes. In addition, the romance highlights marriage stresses and adds yet another storyline. Did I like it? Yes.. could I recommend it? Not sure at all.. many of my friends would eschew the book because it is very dense and intellectually challenging. Sadly, that is a usual recommendation for me. I love intellectually challenging novels. It is anything but dull, but Picoult could have done with the maxim “ less is more”. This one will be challenging book to movie adaptation... very noir.