I am a huge Jodi Picoult fan. Have read 15 of her books and rated most of them 4 or 5 stars...but not this time. I force myself through one-third of the book before giving up. The beginning was great, but the rest was slow, confusing and dominated by extraneous details rather than the core story. Felt like this one came from a ghostwriter (and not a very good one) rather than the author, herself. The best part of this experience was giving up and not forcing myself to read to the end.

OMGooodness!!! I have read a good handful of Jodi Picoult's books, but hands down, this has to be my most favorite. In all aspects, such a wonderful story... And learning so much about the Egyptians and their culture and such!!! And then the characters and their lives intertwining!!! And I never heard of a "death doula", but I want to know more now more than ever!!! This story will hauntingly stay in my memory for a long time!!!

I really enjoyed this story of a woman looking back at what might have been, haven't we all been there? I enjoyed the relationship between all these characters and the writing was magnificent as always. Dawn miraculously survives a serious plane crash, and in the aftermath thinks back to the life she led before her mother's sickness called her away from an archeology site in Egypt where she worked with Wyatt, her first love. Dawn is now married to Brian, and they have a teenage daughter, Merit, who has her own series of angst, and Dawn is also a death doula, caring for those who have not got long to live. Dawn finds out about her husband's close friendship with a female at the college where he teaches, and decides to run off to Egypt to see what her life might have been had she stayed. I certainly learned a lot about ancient Egypt, at times more than I really needed to know, but I skimmed through that to enjoy the real heart of the story.

Typically, I completely enjoy Jodi Picoult's books but this one fell short for me. The research was spot on. You can tell she spent a lot of time on this, but it wasn't a subject that interested me. I felt the story was so bogged down by details, that it took away from the actual plot of the book.

Not up to par with Ms. Picoult’s other books. Too much Egyptology and not enough storyline to draw in the reader.

I am so confused by The book of Two Ways.
I love Jodi Picoult, but I hated this story and couldn't get very far into it.
I am still shocked.

Dawn is on a plane and survives it crashing. In what could have been her last thought she doesn't think of her husband, Brian, and daughter, Meret, but of her first love Wyatt. When the airline offers her a ticket to go anywhere she needs to go she flies to Egypt instead of going home. Fifteen years ago she was a grad student in Egyptology working with Wyatt when they fell in love. When her mother calls to say she is dying of cancer she leaves Wyatt abruptly to take care of her mother and her younger brother and never returns.

I had problems with the time lines. There were flashbacks of her early time with Wyatt and then the story of them coming back together but was it after the plane crash or did she go back at a different time? Maybe she didn't go back at all and it was her imagination. Did she really just walk out on her family after the crash to go back to Wyatt? Sometimes when the story was about her and Wyatt it was hard to tell if it was in the before or after.

Wyatt and Brian were so different. She has to decide does she go with Wyatt and become an Egyptologist like she was meant to be and make exciting discoveries or does she stay with the man who is comfortable and has loved her and built a life with her for 15 years. In reading I felt like the relationship with Brian was forced. Brian loves me and we have a daughter so I must love him and appreciate him because he takes care of me. But even knowing that Wyatt is supposed to be the love of her life I just didn't feel this all consuming connection between them. Why was it so easy for her to leave him 15 years ago and then never stay in touch?

The most interesting part of the book for me was her job as a death doula and how she helped people with their end of life care. She identifies with her client, Win, because they share a birthday and have a similar background in that Win also left her great love and found a comfortable life.

There could have been a lot less explanations about Egyptian gods and hieroglyphics and Brian's talk of physics and a multiverse.

All in all though I did like the book. The description of Egypt and the camaraderie with the others working at the dig made me wish this was something I could see. The struggles she had with her daughter were heartbreaking. Trying to do and say the right things to build up Meret's confidence and never feeling like you hit the mark, wanting so much to be able to fix things for your child.

The end just ended and left a lot of questions unanswered. I think with this author the premise of her stories are if you are faced with two impossible choices which way do you go. In the end I was left feeling the same.

Having not read a Jodi Picoult book in a while, I was excited by the premise and this new book, as most people have often wondered about the road not taken in life.

I liked how the chapters went between Dawn's time in Egypt and her life in Boston. I did feel like the book really dragged and just had too much history and information. I wanted to finish the story, but I was scanning pages to get past some of it.
The two plane crashes with altered endings was a bit over my head as well.
This book just missed the mark for me, sadly.

Jodi Picoult’s newest book was really different from anything that I have read by her before. Instead of being a fiction book with a little bit of background history if needed, this one was more like a study of Egyptology with a story as the background. I was mired deeply into all of the facts about tombs, long names of Egyptian rulers and how to read hieroglyphics. And that wasn’t in a good way! Sometimes, I felt lost in the tombs of ancient Egypt and was ready for the story to move along. The plot was about Dawn, a death doula, and her relationship with her husband Brian and her former lover Wyatt. Most of the plot was entertaining, but again, the endless repetitive details! And the subconscious of Dawn when a plane crashes was also hard to follow what was happening. If you are a fan of Picoult, you may enjoy this book, but it wasn’t my favorite by a long shot. It seemed to be promoting her son’s interest in Egyptology instead of her readers’ interest in her usually fascinating stories. I did enjoy reading about Dawn’s occupation and how she helped people slip from life into death in the most comfortable way possible. This book is not exactly historical fiction, but it has a lot of history in it so I’m not sure how to classify it.
Disclaimer
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”

4.5 Stars

I have yet to pick up my jaw off the floor having only just finished this book moments ago. To say that ENDING punched me in the gut is an understatement. I am a long time JP fan and used to having my heart ripped out of my chest and shredded into a million pieces while reading her brilliant novels and The Book of Two Ways is no exception. What a beautiful, heartbreaking, luminous love story. This is one I will be talking about for awhile.

Possibly my favorite element of any JP novel is the depth of her characters that exist on her pages. The characters here are magnificently far from perfect, making them relatable and compelling. Also magnificent in this book is the breadth of knowledge in both Egyptology and quantum physics (read the book to find out how the two are related here!). Yes, at times it reads like a history or science lesson which is mainly why I rated it 4.5 instead of 5 stars (at times the knowledge can feel like an information dump). However, I have come to have a vast appreciation for how deeply JP dives into her subject matter, becoming just shy of an expert herself, to deliver a whopper of a novel. I have the utmost respect for that kind of commitment and it shines through The Book of Two Ways in multiple facets.

The characters are fantastic and deeply flawed, the history is rich and seductive, the science is thought provoking and the ending is so perfect it’s infuriating. Highly recommend!!!

This was a totally frustrating book for me. Way too much detail about Egyptology, hieroglyphics, mummies, et.al. Not to mention several pages of detailed discussions about quantum physics. Holy Moly! There were several different time lines which made the reading even more difficult. My biggest headache involved two seemingly different end results of the same plane crash. It was as though the author lost track of the story, but I’m sure that’s not the case. Was she trying to portray the idea that different life decisions can alter your course one way or another; e.g. the book of two ways? I’m not sure, but everything was admittedly over my head.

I did enjoy the concept of a death doula ... one who is available to meet a dying person’s every need or whim. Or, even to just be there to talk and spend time. Dawn’s conversations with dying Win were my favorite parts of the book. And Brian, Dawn’s husband, was a saint she didn’t deserve.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

The Book of Two Ways was everything I have come to expect from Jodi Picoult. It was well researched and full of information, while still being an engaging story, I loved the concept of the death doula and loved the parallel timelines. While the Egyptology could be a little confusing for me at times, I loved the book as a whole.

Dawn Edelstein, a “death doula” is involved in a plane crash at the beginning of the book. Instead of continuing her trip after being declared unhurt, she got on a plane to Egypt and turned up at an archeology fig site that she had abruptly left 15 years before. She went to see the man she had left and never forgotten. The author beautifully weaves the threads that include Dawn’s dying mother, Dawn’s physicist husband, her fifteen year old overweight daughter, her dying client Win, Egyptology, and oddly enough, another serious airplane crash. I admit there were some passages that seemed too long, too pedantic, and too “I did all this research so I’m going to put it in.” There was a particularly beautiful passage about grieving that I copied to my “Quotes” file and even fired it off to my sister. There’s a lot of meat in this book. Be prepared to chew.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me this ARC in exchange for an honest review. It will be published in September 2020

Let me start by saying that I am a huge Jodi Picoult fan and that I loved the idea of this book when I read the description however, I had a hard time finishing this book and probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been an ARC that I needed to review. The beginning of the novel was so promising- a plane crash and a woman flashing back to a missed opportunity instead of her family in what she thought were her last moments. Don’t we all wonder sometimes about the road not taken? I was really excited to see where Picoult would take this idea.

The main problem with this book is that there is simply too much information. I found myself skimming through the long passages on Egyptology, hieroglyphs, philosophy and quantum physics. It read like a jumbled text book. I also got bored with her job as a death doula. I mean can none of these people have ordinary jobs or interests that don’t require pages and pages of explanation? It was obvious that Picoult did a lot of research for this book and it would appear that is what she wanted to highlight and showcase. It was Information overload and overly complicated.

I did like the format of the book. I thought going back and forth between Dawn’s time in Egypt with Wyatt and life with her family was a good way to approach the two storylines. And it was interesting to see how the Dawn’s two paths intersected. I enjoyed the storyline with her husband and daughter more-I thought the characters were more well developed. The Egypt sections just had so much information that they just lost me. I think it would have been a much better and more focused book if it had been simplified.

What Picoult excels at in her novels is portraying characters that are in extreme situations that you can identify with and I think she really dropped the ball here. I had to wade through so much extraneous information that I just didn’t care about the people much at all. Mostly, what I feel about this book is that it was a missed opportunity. A great idea that was lost in a sea of unnecessary information.

This book was a very different and interesting read. I learned a whole lot about Egyptology. Although I found the story interesting, I did feel that parts of it were slow, especially in the middle. Not my favorite Jodi Picoult book, but I did enjoy aspects of it and learning about topics I've never known before.

A reader picks up a Jodi Picoult novel for specific reasons. A story well told usually containing some mystery, with enclosed life lessons and usually a twist they didn't see coming. This novel, sadly, has none of that. I'm afraid she seems to have jumped the shark, or several sharks as the case may be. Much the same as with James Michener in later years, there doesn't seem to have been much editing going on here -- great swaths of pages that repeat needlessly. Both storylines are bloated with detail and description that stall the plot, plus two romantic entanglements with exceptional, well educated men who are over the moon for the narrator, and that kind of narrative gets old. Fast. If I hadn't had to write a review, I wouldn't have finished it..

I could not put this book down!! I loved the characters as well as the story. As always, Jodi tackles serious and deep issues in a way that is easy to read and absorb. I was reading the end and sobbing so hard, my husband was worried LOL! It was maybe a bit textbook(y) with the all the Egyptian material - but I thoroughly enjoyed reading and learning that piece of the story. Death, marriage, love - she has done it again. Don't miss this one.

There are no words I can use to describe my disappointment with this book that is barely a novel. I was so thrilled when Netgalley allowed me an advanced copy. That being said, I could not finish it. I tried and it's the first time this has happened with this wonderful author. I love her books and have read them all!
The book was filled with mythology and well, really everything I did not understand and frankly had no interest in understanding. If I wanted to read about Egyptian lure or research, I would have chosen that singular topic to read! It just went on and on and the characterization was so minimal that I tried skipping pages ( I never do that) to get to the actual plot line and it took too long!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Pages and pages of utter boredom. I just gave up.

This isn't my favorite Picoult book, but it is still GREAT. I loved the narrative. The story is super original, and the pacing is perfect. Though it clocks in at around 450 pages, it didn't feel that long. I loved the dichotomy between land and water. It left me with a lot to think about. I enjoyed learning about Egypt, however, my one complaint is this: Picoult always does tons of research on her books - which is AWESOME. But this time, I feel like it wasn't organically integrated. Some paragraphs felt like I was sitting in a classroom instead of getting bits and pieces at a time. Picoult has already earned her ethos many times over; she doesn't need to prove that she's done her research. Her fans already know.

Character development was perfect (to be expected from Picoult) and there are plenty of twists and turns. I would certainly recommend this to a friend, and I have a feeling The Book of Two Ways will be very well-received upon publication.

I have read and enjoyed many Picoult books over the years, so I was very much looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, the book is so bogged down with the Egyptian history and physics lessons that it’s just not enjoyable, and I didn’t want to finish it.