I have to start this with, I usually love Jodi’s work and this one sounded great. However, I found it very difficult to get through. More like I was reading a textbook on ancient Egypt.

I found the protagonist super difficult to know and root for. This was a tough one for me.

I look forward to Jodi’s next book.

Thank you for the arc.

As one of my favorite authors, Jodi Picoult delivers another amazing book! The book opens with Dawn surviving a plane crash and making a decision about where she wants her life to go from there...with her husband and daughter in Boston or back at archeological site with Wyatt, an Egyptologist. While some reviews claim that this book is too heavy on information, I found it very interesting and enjoyed learning about ancient Egyptian customs. In true Picoult fashion she throws in a twist that leaves the reading wondering.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine Books for providing me with a copy of Jodi Picoult’s latest novel, The Book of Two Ways, in exchange for an honest review.

While working on a dig in Egypt, graduate student Dawn Edelstein receives a call that her mom has terminal cancer. Dawn rushes back to the United States, both abandoning her dreams of becoming an Egyptologist and leaving behind a new, yet very passionate relationship with a fellow student named Wyatt.

While her mother is in hospice, Dawn meets Brian, a physicist whose grandmother is dying. Responsible and thoughtful, Brian is the polar opposite to the charming and adventurous Wyatt. Dawn realizes that with her mother’s death, her life has changed; she can no longer afford to complete her degree and she must assume guardianship of her underaged brother. Rather than reach out to Wyatt and explain her situation, she simple moves forward with life, marrying Bryan, and soon discovering that she is pregnant.

Dawn’s interest in Egyptology centered around death and the afterlife, so it wasn’t surprising that she found purpose in her new career as a “death doula.” A bit different from a hospice worker, a death doula provides emotional and spiritual support to the dying and their loved ones. Dawn helps fulfill final requests to allow the terminally ill to end their lives in peace.

Brian and Dawn settle into their routines and their relationship suffers. Dawn has trouble relating to her teenage daughter, Meret, who has more in common with Brian. Often, it feels as if Meret and Brian have teamed up against her.

After being involved in a plane crash, and having her own life and death experience, Dawn realizes that she must return to Egypt to take care of her own unfinished business. She calls her family to tell them she is okay, but rather than catching the next flight home, she hops on a flight to Egypt, where Wyatt is now the professor in charge of the dig site. Can Dawn fix the past? How will her past influence her present?

I’ve read many of Picoult’s previous novels and I’m a fan. I was thrilled for the opportunity to read The Book of Two Ways. It’s a beautiful story about love, loss, and the choices that we make.

The passion between Dawn and Wyatt is electric. I was blushing from what I was reading and it almost felt like I was intruding on their privacy! I don’t generally read romance novels, and The Book of Two Ways is more literary than romance, yet the love story aspect of it is one of the most passionate that I have ever read. I’m just going to admit it, I was crushing on Wyatt!

The other primary relationship is between Dawn and Meret. Meret is having a difficult time making friends in school and she embarrassed that she is overweight. It’s not easy that Dawn is effortlessly thin and cannot relate to her daughter. Picoult does a fine job at creating the dynamic between mother and daughter, but also having them work through their issues in a realistic way. Dawn has complicated relationships with all of the characters, but none are without love.

Prior to reading The Book of Two Ways, I had never heard of a death doula and I found it fascinating. I have been the primary caregiver for several family members who have passed, in fact, I have no close blood relatives alive, and I would have loved to have had the guidance of a death doula. It is such a compassionate and lovely way to help the dying and also to aid their loved ones with grieving.

Overall, I loved The Book of Two Ways. My only small complaint is that Picoult sometimes bogged down the story with explanations of Egyptian history and mythology. It was a bit too much and detracted from Dawn’s story. It was interesting, but it certainly slowed the pace and felt like a different novel entirely- more history textbook than novel.

That said, if you are a fan of Picoult, this is a must read. It’s a raw and honest story of how our relationships and the choices we make impact not only our life, but the way we feel about transitioning to our next life.

I received this book exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. I usually love this author and was excited to read her latest offering, but unfortunately I could not finish it and I abandoned it less than 10% of the way through. As other reviews state, this book is full of Egyptian history and facts and reads much like a textbook with pieces of women’s fiction thrown in.

While some other readers felt it was worth it to slog through and others have stated that they learned a lot about Egyptian history in the process, I just was not in a place to wade through such a book.

This was an excellent book, which an interesting take on a common plot line of "parallel lives" or 'sliding doors'. The author's research on Egypt was impressive and thorough. Overall, a wonderful read!

Truth be told Jodi Picoult is my favorite author and I have read every one of her books and can’t wait for more. What I love most is that she has a genre of her own-she is no cookie cutter author. She takes on issues that are actually happening in our world, studies and deeply researches them before writing her books. I never fail to learn something from her books. This book involves Egyptologists or students of Egyptology.who find fulfillment discovering the tombs and unearthing the remains of ancient burial sites as well as the beautiful artifacts that adorn these tombs and the meaning of the hieroglyphics left by each tomb. This book has 3 main characters-Dawn who had studied to become an archeologist but had to give it up and now finds herself working as a death doula-beng a caregiver to the dying as well as their family), her husband Brian and the man she had worked beside in Egypt, Wyatt. Her first love brought her back to Egypt on several occasions to continue her work with Wyatt. Needless to say they became very close as he played a big part in her life periodically and eventually came to the U.S. for an important reason.
I think it’s important to say that we can learn a lot from the dying and fulfilling their final wishes-lessons that pertain to us as well.this book was also a love story- both personal as well as those that love and pursue archaeology. I highly recommend it and applaud her writing.

Extremely well researched, you can absolutely tell that the author but a lot of time into her background research. Unfortunately it was so loaded with facts that it overshadows the story.

I really disliked his book. I almost DNF it several times but I only kept going to find out what happened at the end and to NOT find out was beyond maddening. There was way too much long winded stuff about Egypt that I just did not find interesting. I didn’t like Brian or Wyatt and Dawn’s job was horribly depressing and hard to read about.

3.5 stars // It took me quite awhile to get into this book. I LOVE Jodi Picoult, but I just had a hard time following the timeline and all the factual information about Egypt.

All that said, though, I did like this. Like her other novels, she really dives deep into tough topics and shows them from all different angles. This one covers lost love, death, and marital infidelity. It was tough in a lot of spots for me. I was upset and heartbroken but then understanding in other spots. It made me feel, and I love that.

I will recommend this to friends, but it wasn’t the BEST novel I’ve read from her.

I loved the premise of this book - it reminded me of my recent read “The Midnight Library”, intended to get you thinking about your path of life and how you would do anything differently, if possible.

However, this book was overloaded with details that occasionally left me puzzled and led me to lose sight of the story itself.

I’ve loved other novels by Jodi Picoult in the past, but this one was unfortunately not a hit for me.

I've read & reviewed a ton of books this past year, but this masterpiece by Jodi Picoult far outshines the rest. A complex love story, both between adults and parents-child, but oh so much more. It explores from many angles the concept of death from the perspective of the main character who is an Egyptologist who changes professions after her mother's death to become a death doula. The combination of all of the beliefs of Middle Egypt with modern-day philosophy and physics is weird, but really works. I found myself absorbed in reading this, contemplating my own beliefs as I read. And, I found myself bookmarking passages to return to at a later date. Though I received a free e-copy of this book to review, I am going to buy a hard copy to keep and cherish. If I could give this ten stars, I would!

Emotional and heartfelt. Jodi Picoult never misses and she certainly did not with this one! I truly think this a book for people of any age and so many take aways!

Jodi Picoult definitely has a formula to her books, and good for her because her readers (including me!) keep coming back for more. That said, this book deviates a little from a typical Picoult novel in both subject matter and style. Instead of a legal question or moral conundrum, it follows a woman after a plane crash in a "sliding doors" fashion. WHAT IF she had made different decisions earlier in her life?

The novel also explores in fascinating details an ancient Egypt burial ground. This was a topic I knew nothing about and was not previously interested in, but Picoult drew me in and fascinated me.

In the end I didn't really know what was real and what was imagined in the main character's sliding door reality, and usually this would unsettle me. However, somehow it worked here and I enjoyed not knowing.

So disappointed I could not get into this book and I am a HUGE Jodi fan. I have loved all of her books. The consensus when I look at other reviews feels fairly similar to my own feelings. I am going to put it down and may try again in the future. I won't review on my blog until I have finished the book.

The Book of Two Ways // by Jodi Picoult

The premise of this book was super intriguing so I was very excited to receive the ARC for this one. I have read a couple of books by Jodi Picoult and while this isn't my favorite genre, I've always enjoyed myself with her. Overall, I like the story that was told here, the twisty structure, and the existential questions that weave their way throughout the entire book. But I want to point out to regular Picoult readers that this book is not exactly like what we are used to.

Jodi Picoult is great at finding topics and questions that to many of us are difficult to answer or think through. She usually presents them in a way where we can see both the benefits and downsides of each path. Sometimes these things are emotional, sometimes moral, and sometimes she turns everything we think we know upside down on its head. What is different about this book though is not this particular component but what she has added around it.

Part of the reason I wanted to read The Book of Two Ways is because I enjoy learning about new topics but Picoult took this to a whole new level. I've never understood the term info-dumping that I learned from other reviewers but I know exactly what they mean now. This book has SO MUCH information coming at you the entire way through. I'm used to a lot of world-building from my favorite fantasy books but this almost feels like a school textbook sometimes, not only for Egyptology but also quantum physics and several other topics. While overall I found this all to be interesting, it was difficult to stay engaged with the main storyline sometimes. I also had several other books I was reading and found myself preferring the excitement of those the majority of the time because Two Ways was just not very thrilling. It has more of a slow and steady approach.

The last quarter of the story though definitely picked up a bit. I had several theories about how this book would end but she managed to elude me after all. I enjoy a twisty story and while it was a bit confusing when you got into the middle of this mixup, it was fun to put the puzzle together at the end. I am happy that I read this book. It's obvious that a ton of research went into it. But I do think that the description of it makes it sound a bit more exciting that it turned out to be and that this wouldn't be a good fit for a lot of her regular readers.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am a fan of Jodi Picoult, really I am. And I love Egyptology. But this book just didn't work for me. It was well researched (as per the author's usual) and very descriptive but the story just wasn't interesting.

Jodi Picoult's books are always great and this did not disappoint. I learned a lot and look forward to her next effort.

With a heavy heart I have to admit that I did not finish this book. I loved Jodi Picoult's previous books and I own most of them, however I could not get through the first half of this book. This was definitely a different kind of story from this author, and as much as I appreciated the amount of work the author put into researching and writing this book, this was not what I expected to read when I requested this book. I just think that I was not the right audience for it. I am looking forward to reading more books from Jodi Picoult, and she still is one of my favorite authors out there.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

When Dawn Edelstein survives a plane crash, the airline offers her a ticket anywhere she wants to go. The decision seems obvious, but this near-death experience leaves her at a crossroads. Does she return to Boston to see her husband and teenage daughter? Or does she instead fly to Egypt to revisit her life from years ago at an archeological dig with her former love Wyatt? This book examines both options, and we get to see how small decisions can have massive effects on our lives. Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors, and this book definitely felt different than a lot of her previous work. But it was fascinating and thought-provoking and so detailed and rich in history. A must for any Jodi Picoult fan--or Egyptian-history buff!

To be fair, I haven’t always loved Jodi Picoult’s books, often feeling like they are just the next hot topic to write about in an overly dramatic fashion. Really liked that as a teen, but as an adult it’s no longer my thing. This book was a bit different in that it didn’t really seem to focus around some taboo topic or drama, but it did have the romance bit. I enjoyed reading about the archaeological stuff, but felt maybe it was a bit too detailed. I was a little annoyed with the main character needing so much to be with this person, but at least she had some adventures on the way.