Second Glance

Jodi Picoult

Average Rating 10/10 (1 Review)

When a plot of land is being developed in Vermont against the will of a local Native American tribe, strange things begin to happen - and Ross Wakeman, a paranormal investigator, is asked to get involved. He's a desperate drifter who's taken up ghost hunting in an effort to cross paths again with his fiancée, who died in a car crash eight years ago, but he has yet to experience anything even remotely paranormal. Then Ross meets Lia... As a seventy-year-old murder case is reopened, a shocking secret about a crime of passion long past is revealed.

About the Author:
Jodi Picoult grew up in Nesconset, New York. She received an A.B. in creative writing from Princeton and a master's degree in education from Harvard. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.

'Jodi Picoult's novels often focus on lives turned upside down by some terrible event, and it's her way with the small emotional detail that makes them so rewarding.'

Review by Annett Grosser-Rogoff (310513) Rating (10/10)

Review by Annett Grosser-Rogoff
Rating 10/10
Second Glance by American writer Jodi Picoult keeps the reader mesmerized from the start. It is a fascinating story influenced by different genres that intertwine in such an imaginative way it makes it very difficult to find something to criticize. The novel explodes into a firework of outstanding communication, enchanting characters and spellbinding scenery right from the start and holds its grip the entire time. "Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third." Is the opening sentence of this wonderful book and Picoult keeps the interest of the reader these first few words manage to produce.

Wakeman becomes a ghost hunter after his fiancée dies. He can’t forget her even after eight years have passed and after failing to take his own life on several occasions hopes to find the love of his life again. Circumstances lead him return to Comtosook, Vermont, where his sister and her son live. The town is in the middle of a dispute with the Abenaki Indians who believe a piece of land sold by a man called Spencer Pike to a development company is a sacred burial ground and haunted by ancestors. The company representative hires Ross to proof them wrong. Whilst on his nightly hunting expeditions with his nephew Ethan, who has problems of his own, Wakeman falls in love with Lia, a sad young woman who seems to be terrified of her husband.

Parallel to this the local sheriff re-opens a murder case that couldn’t be solved in 1932 and a lot of strange events start to unfold. All these seem to be connected to an episode in Vermont's history, that are based on the real-life event of the Eugenics Project in the 1920s and 1930s, which is still very shameful for Vermonters and led to Vermont's Sterilization Law in 1931. At the same time the reader learns about Dr. Meredith Oliver, who specializes in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and lives with her daughter Lucy, an asthmatic who can see ghosts, in Maryland. Due to her mother’s busy work schedule Lucy is mainly looked after by her great-grandmother, Ruby - who is not who she seems to be.

Thanks to Picoult’s rare ability to write convincingly her complex characters and twisted plots all come together in a very believable matter and hold the reader in a tight grip of enjoyment.
Annett Grosser-Rogoff (31st May 2013)