From the Bookshelf of Shut Up & Read…

Mad Honey

Jodi Picoult,

Jennifer Finney Boylan

Start date: November 1, 2022

Finish date: November 30, 2022

Discussion: Archived BOTM

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What Members Thought

Mar 22, 2025 Gracie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.75

Athletic and popular, Asher Fields is a star on his high school's hockey team. Any girl would be thrilled to call him her boyfriend and that girl turns out to be Lily.

Lily Campanello is the new girl in school, intelligent, musically gifted but with a dark past she keeps close to her chest. When Mya, and her best friend since second grade, Asher take Lily under their wings she doesn't feel lonely anymore.

Lily and Asher seem like the ideal couple but are the perfect example of things not alway 4.75

Athletic and popular, Asher Fields is a star on his high school's hockey team. Any girl would be thrilled to call him her boyfriend and that girl turns out to be Lily.

Lily Campanello is the new girl in school, intelligent, musically gifted but with a dark past she keeps close to her chest. When Mya, and her best friend since second grade, Asher take Lily under their wings she doesn't feel lonely anymore.

Lily and Asher seem like the ideal couple but are the perfect example of things not always being what they seem, and people seeing what they want to see.

Once Lily is murdered, however, nothing can prevent her past from coming to light or protect the ones she leaves behind from wild accusations and a firestorm of media attention.

I like how facts about the animal kingdom are interspersed throughout the story, conveyed in bite-sized easily digestible chunks and I love the metaphors the author draws between Homo sapiens and the rest of Animalia, especially bees and how the comparisons all relate to the main characters and their situation.

Picoult's people are never all good or all bad just human and flawed, some more flawed than others. While exploring themes of betrayal, loyalty, feminism, misogyny, sexism, domestic abuse, secrets, and self-preservation, this story examines whether some people deserve a second chance or whether they are just irredeemable and unworthy.

Told in Olivia's and Lily's POVs, this is yet another well-written and layered story from Picoult about another timely and controversial topic and all the many ways human beings hurt each other, and how mothers will do anything to protect their offspring. Not to take anything away from Jennifer Finney Boylan, but I’m only speaking of the author’s work with which I’m familiar.

This story was an emotional rollercoaster, and amidst all the legal maneuverings and pyrotechnics is the simple tale of a boy who has lost his love and a search for the truth.

Don't let the generic and innocuous cover of Mad Honey fool you as the story is anything but basic or bland. The title is so fitting and the plot is suspenseful, tight and fast-paced with some surprising twists and turns that will leave you breathless and flabbergasted by the time you reach the bittersweet ending.

This is an almost flawless story and the only reason I took off a quarter of a star is that I guessed who the perpetrator was well before the end of the book.

Finally, my advice to anyone interested in reading this book, DON’T read any of the reviews on Amazon. I went through them after the fact and the twist midway that so shocked me, would have been considerably undermined had I read the reviews first. ...more

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