Harvesting the Heart

Man it has been a crazy month. I work in a tourist town and at a tourist driven shop. We just had our yearly festival and worked A LOT of hours. Needless to say I have had no time to read and I miss it and have a stack of books to catch up on. I did listen to Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult while falling asleep.

This is a book about Paige who's mother left when she was 5. Her father was devastated but did his best to raise the daughter he cherished. Paige has a gift for drawing and sometimes her pictures have hidden meanings that only the subject understands. Instead of going to college to pursue art, she gets on a bus and rides until she ends up in Cambridge. Her she gets a job waiting tables and meets Nicolas.

Nicolas was raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and is the golden boy at the hospital where he is interning as a cardiologist. Nicolas falls in love with Paige and despite his parents misgivings and threats to cut his educational funding, he marries her. When Paige discovers she is pregnant her world crashes down. She fears she will follow in her mother's footsteps and be a bad mother.

I always enjoy Mrs. Picoult's books. There were times I wanted to yell at Nicolas not to be so hard headed and times I wanted to yell at Paige to tell her it's ok, ask for help...talk to someone. I didn't feel this was as strong as a story as Nineteen Minutes or My Sister's Keeper; however it was better than The Tenth Circle. I love that, even when the story isn't as strong, that I still get into the book because of her characters. They are "whole" and 3 dimensional and real. You can't say that about many books or authors. Stop by here to read more about this book at Barnes and Noble and look at the video. They have an interview with Jodi and she talk a little about the movie coming out. She also answered my question about how much input authors have when their books are made into movies. Excellent interview!