Jodi Picoult has written a fair few number of novels in the last few years. What are other Dopers’ opinion of her? What is your favourite Picoult book?
Up until recently I really began to dislike her books. They all began to feel too similar and actually became rather boring. However, I am reading ‘Change of Heart’ at the moment and am enjoying it so much. I may have a renewed liking for her 
Eh. The only book of hers that I read was the one about the sister who had been conceived specifically to be a donor to her older sister. It was ok but it didn’t make me want to run out and read everything else she wrote.
I read My Sister’s Keeper, the same book Inner Stickler mentioned. I liked it, she managed to flesh out the characters quite well, and I was impressed how well she could write from a man’s perspective. It’s not in my top 10 books of all time, but I’d recommend it to others.
I have read all of her books. They do seem to follow a pattern, all culminating in a shocker at the end. Still, I like them because they can really draw you in. Unfortunately, after I read them I am kinda feeling like “wha???”
I like Salem Falls the best because even though I knew there would be a shocker at the end, I did not expect the twist it took.
They do very much fall into a pattern, and I’ve been less interested in them recently. The two I like best are probably Songs of the Humpback Whale, because of how the story unfolded forwards and backwards, and Perfect Match, which was the first of hers I read.
But a while back I tried to read the one about the comic book writer and his daughter, and found it just too disturbing and icky to continue.
I am plowing through everything she’s written! Sure a tad formulaic, but I just LOVE her work. She’s given me many sleepless night, because I can’t put her down. Just checked out and read three in a row.
I like most of her books. I particularly did not like Change of Heart, because of its
heavy-handedness on the convict-is-Christ analogy and the anti-death-penalty screed. I have no issue with Picoult’s views on the death penalty; I just don’t like being beaten over the head with other people’s political views, whether I agree with them or not. It wasn’t what she had to say; it was that I read Picoult’s books because she usually bases plots on topical, relevant issues and gives me something to think about. In Change of Heart, she based a plot on a topical, relevate issue and tried to tell me what to think. I feel the same way about Mercy.
I also didn’t like Picture Perfect, either, just because I thought it wasn’t up to her standards; I thought the plot was banal. Nineteen Minutes, in particular, Handle with Care, and Keeping Faith, in particular, I thought were excellent.
I’ve read several of them, and the one that stood out to me as particularly good was Nineteen Minutes.
I’ve (proof)read over a half dozen of 'em, and they really are the same book over and over: the mother filled with a heartbreakingly boundless love for her special child (special as in: personifying a currently newsworthy Affliction); her budding romantic entanglement with a man “met cute” whose occupation is grist for either emotional conflict or professional conflict of interest; the woman’s comparatively neglected physically or mentally “normal” other (teenaged) child, who acts out in petty criminal acts or other self-harming behaviors; the last acts in a thematic-threads-tying-together courtroom setting …
That said, they’re well crafted and the author has a distinctive sense of humor and isn’t always hitting the reader over the head with the book’s Theme.
norvalnormal I totally agree with you, hence why I don’t think I will read anymore of her books.
Having said that I have just finished ‘Change of Heart’ and I did enjoy it. I did skim a few of the middle chapters because like Sigmagirl said, I felt as though religion was being preached to me, but apart from that it was a middle of the road, good read.
I’d read and enjoyed a few of her books, but My Sister’s Keeper totally kicked my ass. I hadn’t realized it was her shtick to do the surprise twist at the end, and was completely absorbed in MS’sK to the point where I ran away to lock myself in the bath when I got close enough to finish the book. The death at the end felt like such a kick in the teeth, just so unnecessarily emotionally manipulative, I think I wound up throwing the damn book across the room I was so mad.
I haven’t picked up another one of hers since then, but I’m sure eventually enough time will pass that I will.