Sing You Home

Sing You Home, by Jodi Picoult.

Every life has a soundtrack.

There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent rubbing baby oil on my stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. There's another that reminds me of tagging along with my father on Sunday mornings to pick up the New York Times. There's the song that reminds me of using fake ID to get into a nightclub; and the one that brings back my cousin Isobel's sweet sixteen, where I played Seven Minutes in Heaven with a boy whose breath smelled like tomato soup.

If you ask me, music is the language of memory.

Another awesome book by Jodi Picoult, this novel is about Zoe, who has recently miscarried and divorced from Max, and how she meets Vanessa, who later turns out to be her partner. Zoe is unable to have children but Vanessa can still conceive, and Zoe wants to use her and Max's frozen embryos for Vanessa; Max, however, a new "born-again Christian," wants his brother and wife to have them, as they are unable to conceive as well. This pits Zoe against Max, and when Max's crazy anti-gay Christian church gets involved in the trial, all hell breaks loose.

I didn't know that Rhode Island doesn't allow gay marriage, which is interesting; Zoe and Vanessa go to Massachusetts in the novel to get married. I also couldn't believe how anti-gay Max's church was - though, as they put it, they are "not anti-gay, but rather, against gays having special rights." (because apparently wanting to get married is a "special right" that only heterosexuals can have)

The book was interesting and well-researched, as are all Picoult's novels, and the ending was definitely more positive/happier than a lot of her previous ones, which was nice to see.

4 1/2 stars out of 5.

*Disclosure: I received an ARC (Advance Readers Copy) of this book from the publisher to review.