Aside from that, the audio is technically bad as well. At one point, the author refers to "the prosecutor" in the case, but of course in a custody case, there is no prosecutor - just the parents. To pick just one example of many, there is no court in this country that would allow a 7 year old child to sit in the courtroom to hear the testimony in her own custody case. The story involves a custody battle, and the courtroom scenes are so far from reality that it distracted me from the story. The story is not just unbelievable (I'm happy to suspend disbelief in a novel, but this was a bridge too far), but also irritatingly, distractingly inaccurate and sloppy. I have liked other books by Jodi Picoult, but this one was really disappointing - I wasn't even sure I would bother to finish it. And with that, I give the book a solid four stars. However, despite these three things, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. This was like fingernails on the chalkboard to me, and even with my limited audio editing knowledge I recognized that those were items that could have been edited out of the recording. And last of all 3.) if you listen to this book on an ipod, you will hear one of the narrators swallow and swish inbetween passages.
2.) Typically, all of the characters in Jodi's books are very well developed, but I missed the full development and background for characters like the husband. However, if you can suspend your personal beliefs the story is still well told.
) the plot/story was a bit unrealistic for me (I am not religious). There were three things that I felt weren't quite up to her usual standards: 1. And the slowness eventually gave way to Jodi's engaging writing style.
I was determined to give the book a fair shake. During the first part of this book however, I was scratching my head. I start every Picoult book with high expectations.