This was okay. I didn't get as involved in the characters as I usually do with Jodi Picoult's work. I felt like the real story starts where this one ends. ( )

I tried very hard to read this book. The 2nd one of hers I tried to read. The 1st one was a 4 star. I got halfway through it but just couldn't finish it. It went back and forth in time and back and forth with people and was generally so confusing that I couldn't keep up. It is an older one. ( )

3.5 stars

Jane and Oliver have been married for 15(?) years, and they were together longer than that. Their daughter Rebecca’s 15th birthday is coming up soon. Oliver is a famous marine biologist who studies humpback whales, but his career success has come to the detriment of his home life. After a big argument, Jane and Rebecca leave. Jane’s brother Joley (Jane and Joley have always been close), helps direct Jane from California to Massachusetts (where Joley is living and working) via letters along the way.

The first half was a bit more confusing with regard to timeline. Rebecca’s POV was told with each chapter going backward in time (but luckily, those were the chapters that told us a date). Until the middle of the book where other timelines met up, chapters were all moving forward chronologically, but they had started at different points in the story. Luckily, mid-way through, the timelines met up.

I didn’t find this as good as Picoult’s other books, but the second half did pick up for me – maybe because all timelines (except Rebecca’s) were now moving forward. But it might also have been that I liked reading the same thing happening from a different POV. Have to admit, though. I don’t think I really liked any of the characters. I suppose that could mean that everyone had good and bad points (like in real life), but I really didn’t like Sam and Hadley. I agreed with the ending – just barely as it almost didn’t go that way, and I was really afraid it wouldn’t (but there are probably readers who wanted it to end the way I didn’t!). ( )

The writing is good, the underlying theme interesting, although the implication of the byline on the front of my copy is a bit misleading.

However the structure is a bit confusing. There are five different narrators, all distinct; but one of them narrates in reverse order. The way the narrations converge mid-way through the book is cleverly done, and once I'd got the general idea I was mostly able to keep track. But it meant that what would have been a dramatic climax to the book is already summed up in the first chapters... so I knew what would be coming, and the ending rather peters out.

Interesting to read the author's first published novel, but I doubt if I'll re-read it.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2020/09/songs-of-humpback-whale-by-jodi-pic... ( )

A bit too sappy and overly dramatic. If you have ever read any of her later boos, they seem to follow a similar formula. Only three successfully overcome this predictability... this does not. ( )