by Catherine (England): I never feel the need to write reviews and I’ve read nearly almost all of Jodi Picoults work, some are incredibly moving and great, others not so. However this one, whilst I could see the moral conflict here and enjoyed the story, I think the author should have spent more time with someone from the LGBT community. A lot of the relationships and descriptions of the women were very stereotypical. The homophobic comments from the Christian side were not triggering as that is expected, but the language used to describe a gay relationship by the author, was triggering. For example, a loving partner would never, ever refer to their wife as a dyke. There was also an interaction between the two women which was very transphobic, then the added insult of sexual harassment just emphasises the prejudice that gay people face on the daily. (I felt this was unnecessary – unrelated to the story – and was a chapter that didn’t need to be added). Like I said, if these were made by the evangelical Christians I could have read them and moved on, but the author wants you to feel the pain and life of the two women, and I spent the whole book feeling like “this is a lesbian couple written by a straight woman who has never met or talked to a lesbian.”
I was excited to read this as it’s the first representation of a gay relationship, however I thought Jodi let herself down, and all it needed was some more in-depth research, other than a few Google searches about what lesbians like and don’t like.
