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Book Review of The Pact: A Love Story

The Pact: A Love Story
reviewed on + 43 more book reviews


Maybe I shouldn't have read "My Sister's Keeper" and "Nineteen Minutes" as my first Picoult books. Everything I've read since is a disappointment after those two. Having said that, this book offers a perceptive, in-depth look at possible triggers for teenage suicide, the pressures of school and parental expectations as teenagers brink on the verge of college, and the extreme loyalty of lifelong friendships, including the events that can tear them apart. My major disappointment in this book was the extended jail scenes involving one of the main characters as he awaits trial. Part teenaged angst, part prison book, part courtroom drama, and part Romeo-and-Juliet plagiarism, "The Pact" does it best to play on your emotions and sympathies as it weaves a complex web of relationships and the harmful power they can have in bringing about a tragedy.