A Spark of Light: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

The lives of ordinary people become intertwined when a gunman takes hostages at a women's clinic in the #1 New York Times bestselling author's latest.

At Mississippi's sole remaining women's reproductive services clinic, a gunman bursts in and takes its patients and staff hostage. The stories that brought these individuals to the clinic vary, from a woman awaiting cancer screening results to a protestor hoping to catch the clinic in a scandal that could be used in a pro-life campaign. Then there is the police hostage negotiator, whose daughter is also trapped inside the facility, and the gunman himself, who has a vendetta to carry out. Meanwhile, across the state, a seventeen-year-old woman lands in the hospital after an attempt to self-terminate her pregnancy and is subsequently charged by the pro-life DA for the murder of her unborn child. They, too, are connected to the events unfolding in the clinic.
      As the book moves backward in time, each chapter set one hour earlier than the last, we learn how all these people and their stories are unwittingly connected--and that none of these characters' reasons for being where they are at this fateful place and time are exactly what it appears at first glance.

• ISBN10: 0345813413
• ISBN13: 9780345813411
• Publish Date: 2 October 2018
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: Random House Canada
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[bumblingbookworm]

This review was originally posted on The Bumbling Bookworm

Picoult has been an auto-buy author for me over the years, despite the fact that it's been almost 10 years since I last read one of her books.  I decided to pick this up as part of my project to read all the books on my physical TBR, to see if Picoult is still an author I want to read.  Unfortunately, the answer to that is no and I've given all her books to my mum because I know she'll enjoy them.  On a positive note, I felt that she dealt with the sensitive and still controversial topic of abortions quite well, and the author's note at the end of the book makes it clear that this book was very well researched, with a lot of effort put into it.

Picoult remains the master of weaving together a complex story, but unfortunately this felt too clinical for me and I don't think that a story about such an emotive subject should feel so clinical.  On top of that, I really didn't enjoy the reverse-timeline method, where the story is told from the end to the beginning - it loses all intrigue for me and doesn't make me want to pick up the book as a result.  This is the second book I've read with this format and I disliked it in both.  I also picked the 'twist' pretty much straight away, and wasn't at all impacted when it was revealed.  This book was solidly written but ultimately not for me.