At least once a month, I will try to post a book review. Sometimes it will be a book I read years ago, other times I will have just turned the last page and feel like writing a review.
My reviews will always be about a book I rated with either 4 or 5 stars on Goodreads and/or Amazon. There are soooo many books available for readers to choose from—and to choose to buy—that I want to save you readers both selection time and hard-earned money. I want to give you “the best bang for your buck.” So, even though there are some 3-star books that are still “good,” I’ll only post reviews about the “better” and “best” books I’ve read.
Goodreads’ rating system: Amazon’s rating system:
3 stars = I liked it 3 stars = It’s okay
4 stars = I really liked it 4 stars = I like it
5 stars = It was amazing 5 stars = I love it
My 10-year-old daughter checked out a biography from her school library the other day that was the story of an Auschwitz survivor. That book made me think of Jodi Picoult’s novel The Storyteller, so that is why I chose it for May’s Fourth Friday Book Review.
I read this book four years ago, and it is one of four books I have read by Jodi Picoult.
***** 5 STARS *****
for The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
Back Cover Book Blurb
Some stories live forever . . . Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t.
Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future. f
My May 2017 Review
Jodi Picoult’s writing in this novel is phenomenal, just like it was in another of my favs she wrote, My Sister’s Keeper. It is definitely a tie now for my favorite author between Picoult and Anita Shreve!
Reading The Storyteller will give you the same disturbing feeling as seeing the movie Schindler’s List did. You’ll shake your head as you read about the horrific events surrounding the account of character Minka’s time at Auschwitz. Even though I’ve read/seen many things about the Holocaust, the tragedies that occurred during World War II are really brought home due to author Picoult’s extraordinary talent at making a reader intensely feel each emotion of the characters in her novel.
What makes The Storyteller extra exceptional though is the main issue of this book. Minka’s 20-something-year-old granddaughter Sage faces a huge moral dilemma when character Josef walks into the bakery where Sage works making bread and pastries. Josef tells a secret to Sage, and then he asks her for a favor beyond all favors.
Sage wrestles between what she feels is right and wrong all throughout the novel, and which path to take regarding Josef. At end of the book, Sage’s decision might still leave readers questioning if her actions were admirable or appalling.
