Top 5 Novels by Jodi Picoult

In Jodi Picoult's 2013 novel The Storyteller, she has topped herself!

This novel alternates between present day and the 1930s and 1940s.

The main characters follow:

• Present Day:  Sage Singer, a 25-year-old baker who works hard at hiding a scar on her face and living a life that feels more like punishment than a real life to make up for how she got the scar.
• 1930s and 1940s:  Sage's grandmother, Minka, is a girl living in Poland with her family before the war starts.

The stories interlink and make for a fabulous read that will keep you guessing till the end.

In My Sister's Keeper, Picoult writes about basic human rights as they relate to using another person to help keep someone else alive.

Kate has leukemia so her parents have another child, Anna, so that that child can be used to try to keep Kate alive. Anna loves her sister but feels pulled in two directions with the demands placed on her to be her sister's keeper.

This popular novel was made into a 2009 movie starring  Abigail Breslin as Anna, Sofia Vassilieva as Kate, and Cameron Diaz as their mother.

Perfect Match was published in 2002. This novel deals with sexual abuse of a child, which is always a tough topic. But Picoult sets up the book's drama expertly.

The mother of the abused child is an assistant district attorney who now has to navigate on a personal level the world that she usually deals with in her job. The book has twists and turns that make the reader think and wonder what they would do in the same horrible situation.

In her 1999 novel, Picoult sets the story in an Amish community. A young Amish girl gets pregnant and has the baby in secret. The baby's body is found and a trial is held.

Entertainment Weekly calls this novel "A Witness-meets-Agnes of God courtroom thriller… both absorbing and affecting.”

This compelling book was made into a movie in 2004 starring Mariska Hargitay and Alison Pill.

Handle with Care deals with a young girl with brittle bone syndrome and what that means for her and her family. The stress is shared equally among all family members with the carefulness they have to show as well as the burgeoning medical bills this medical problem poses.

This novel was published in 2009. I remember that this book in particular offered such atmosphere and evoked a feeling while reading it that when I think about it, those feelings come back. This novel was dark and sad and wonderful.

I chose these five novels as my favorite Picoult novels, but really I could have included just about any of her others, such as these books:

• Lone Wolf
• Sing Me Home
• House Rules
• The Tenth Circle
• Songs of the Humpback Whale

When I'm reading one of Jodi Picoult's novels, I'm totally captivated with the characters and the stories. I've yet to read them all (I like to pace myself so I have some to look forward to), but I love each and every one.

Luckily for us readers, she is a prolific author and already has 21 books to her credit. I hope she writes at least that many more!