"Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?"
An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it's a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there's nothing spiritual about the property.
Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He's driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He's been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fiancée's death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Jodi Picoult's enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion.
Hailed by critics as a "master" storyteller (Washington Post), Picoult once again "pushes herself, and consequently the reader, to think about the unthinkable" (Denver Post). Second Glance, her eeriest and most engrossing work yet, delves into a virtually unknown chapter of American history -- Vermont's eugenics project of the 1920s and 30s -- to provide a compelling study of the things that come back to haunt us -- literally and figuratively. Do we love across time, or in spite of it?
The Washington Post - Susan Dooley
You don't have to believe in ghosts to acknowledge the path it takes as it works its way from parents, to grandparents, to great grandparents, ancestors passing on genes and the protection of their love.
Library Journal - Diana McRae
This intelligent novel gets off to a jerky start, with too many characters appearing in too rapid a succession. Although readers might be frustrated with the opening, the book as a whole will make them glad they persevered.
Publishers Weekly
Firmly rooting her otherworldly tale in everyday reality, she produces a spellbinding suspense novel offering insight into the human spirit and the depths of true love.
Booklist - Kristine Huntley
Picoult mixes shocking fact and compelling fiction to produce a mesmerizing tale of love and second chances.
Kirkus Reviews
... a gratifying blend of gothic melodrama and social critique ... A balance of suspense and science makes for a memorable ghost tale.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by purpleskin second glance- a must read I read this quite some time ago, but the plot and the story as well as the characters are still ingrained in my mind. I can still remember every little detail- that is how much I love this book.
It has romance for those romantic hearts and... Read More
Rated of 5
by kim jonas not my most favorite I am an avid reader across all genres but this one I had to really force myself to finish. The reason why I picked this book up was because of My Sisters Keeper (somber, yet extraordinarily compelling) by same author.
I am a huge fan of the... Read More
Rated of 5
by Melissa History repeats itself? This was a book club selection for our group and it was an overwhelming favorite! Not only the story line of romance and mystery, but the controversial subject of eugenics. The book not only provided many great quotes we cited too, but there were... Read More
Rated of 5
by Julianna
This book is great !!!!!!!!! I love it ..its sooo great !!!!!!!!! I'm going to do a book report on it for school .....i've already got a few people wodering "what happens next?" hehehe ...its a great wonderful book ....i've... Read More
Heartbreakingly beautiful and inescapably human, ordinary and extraordinary people chart their own courses in life. In the aftermath of one tragic afternoon, they are all forced to look at themselves and face up to the observation that the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
Rebecca, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother, is caught unawares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it--how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been--is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.
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A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
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Library Journal - Diana McRae
of 5
by purpleskin
of 5
by kim jonas
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