CHANGE OF HEART

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

"One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the net, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Not her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice, waiting for a miracle.

For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to off the world. In a heartbeat, though, he gets one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crime, and the rage of a mother who has lost a child. 

Father Michael is a man whose past decisions led him to devote the rest of his life to God. But when he comes face-to-face with Shay, he must question everything he's been taught to believe about religion, about good and evil, about forgiveness. About himself."

from back cover

The back doesn't really give that much detail about what is actually happening in the book, so I wasn't too excited to read it. After reading a few chapters though, I was ready to rush through to the end. This book is about a family that experiences a double murder: June's daughter and her husband. The murderer? Shay Bourne. After he is sentenced to the death penalty (one of the jurors was Father Michael) he is sent to prison and the book jumps forward 11 years. Now, Claire (who wasn't even born when the murders occurred) is having trouble with her heart and is in desperate need for a heart transplant. Shay hears about what's happening through the news and decides that he wants to donate his heart to Claire so he can "experience salvation" before he dies. When a ACLU lawyer, Maggie, hears about this, she is drawn to the case and takes it on immediately. They have to overcome many obstacles including the method of death because Shay can't donate his organs if he is killed by lethal injection, and the entire idea of giving his heart to the sister of the one he killed.

After starting to write this review, I'm kind of rethinking how I feel about it because it seems like most of the details she put in were all over the place. At first, I thought that it was going to be like The Green Mile; miracles were occurring in the prison around Shay. He "cures" and inmate with AIDS, he brings a bird back to life, and he "feeds" the inmates with a single piece of gum. Those were all mentioned, but nothing was really tied up in the end, you never really figure out what was happening. It was a pretty good read though. Like her other books, each chapter was told by a different character, which was a really good method for this one. Religion was a HUGE topic in this book and every character practiced different ones so it was interesting to see everything about the death penalty through a variety of point of views. I did however, predict the ending of this book a few chapters in. Although it was predictable, it was still full of twists and turns that kept it interesting. I don't think I'll ever read a Jodi Picoult book that I don't like!