Book Review: The Pact - Jodie Picoult

This blog post is a review of another Jodie Picoult novel, my favourite. 
"Jodi Picoult has written a haunting tragedy of two families. The Pact is rich with suspense and compassion, and it will make people question how well they know their own children. It is an intensely moving novel".

-       Luanne Rice, author of HOME FIRES
I believe this quote summarises the novel and captures its essence.

With this riveting psychological drama, Jodi Picoult explores the dynamics of intimate relationships under stress, from the seemingly inexplicable mind of a teenager to the bonds of friendship and marriage. I believe very few writers have such a gift for evoking everyday life coupled with the ability to create a level of dramatic tension that will keep you up reading late into the night (well at-least that was my experience). The Pact is storytelling at its best: wonderfully observed, deeply moving, and utterly impossible to put down.

What is the novel about you ask?

The Pact paints a portrait of families in anguish over a suicide pact between a teenage couple which leaves one of them dead and the other one on trial for murder.

An exert from chapter one of the novel:

There was nothing left to say.
He covered her body with his, and as she put her arms around him she could picture him in all his incarnations: age five, and still blond; age eleven, sprouting; age thirteen, with the hands of a man. The moon rolled, sloe– eyed in the night sky; and she breathed in the scent of his skin. “I love you,” she said.
He kissed her so gently she wondered if she had imagined it. She pulled back slightly, to look into his eyes.
And then there was a shot.