Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

Wow.  I just finished this book.  It was hard to put down at times and at times I needed a 15 minute break from it.

I've read a few Jodi Picoult's novels.  The Storyteller was amazing, My Sister's Keeper made me cry (I saw the movie first, which prompted me to read the book), The Pact, which I wasn't too impressed with.  I think that's it.  The Storyteller is what made me pick up her newest book.  I have seen many negative comments about it, including that it goes too much into elephants and their behavior.  I'll agree there were times when I was tempted to skim a page or two, but I didn't.  For the most part I enjoyed learning more about these majestic, intelligent animals.

Leaving Time is about a young teenage girl, Jenna, who is looking for her mother, who disappeared when she was three years old.  Her mother was a scientist studying elephant behaviors, specifically elephant grief.  Both her parents worked at an elephant sanctuary in New Hampshire (of all places) and one night there is a death that is deemed an accident to avoid a messy, possible murder investigation. That night her mother disappears from the local hospital and is never heard from again and her father ends up in the psychiatric hospital, where he still resides 10 years later.

Jenna, who has lived with her grandmother since that night, finds a washed-up psychic and the detective that was on the scene the night of the accident who blames himself for not digger deeper, to help her find her mother or at least figure out the truth of that night.  There are twists and just when I thought I had figured it out, I turned the page and was shocked at the turn of events.  Leaving Time is definitely a good story and I look forward to reading Jodi's next book.

4/5