Very well written book about a very tough subject. As always, Jodi Picoult has touched the heart of the subject and made us feel a part of the story.

A Spark of Light is powerfully written about a powerful topic. When does a person become a person? At what stage of conception does a baby become a person where having an abortion become murder? When does the spark of light ignite?

Jodi Picoult has once again touched on a tough controversial subject where you begin to question your beliefs and seek to find answers. First of all, reading this book may not have emotionally effected me as others because I have experienced an abortion or know of someone who had one. That being said, it was sad and upsetting, so I am sure this will be a trigger from many readers. Secondly, the book is written in reverse chronological order, starting at the final event and then preceeding to each hour before the major event to explain each person's backstory. To be honest, this format bothered me and I felt frustrated because I wanted to find out more of the next event not the past. However, the last paragraph wrapped up the story well resulting in a four for my score.

Thank you NetGalley for this chance to read this galley.

I always love Jodi Piccoult books. I read her books for the different ways she narrates, passes time, and her endings. I love that her two most recent books are focused on current social issues.

A Spark of Light follows a group of women who find themselves in a women’s clinic that is being held up by a gunman. They all have different beliefs, backgrounds, and reasons they are there. It is moving and I found it helped me to relate to characters that disagreed with my personal beliefs. Piccoult so throughly researches and develops each character and their backstory. As always she keeps you guessing until the very end.

Spark of Light brings up so many important and controversial issues. It’s sure to be a book club hit. Since I read The Pact in 1998, one of Picoult’s earliest books, I became a huge fan. Many of you know that for a while however, I was frustrated; I felt the books were becoming too formulaic for me. Thankfully, that was a quick spell and she got right back on track. Her last book, Small Great Things is now one of my absolute favorites from her large pool of work.

As has become her trademark, Picoult tackles subjects that are often taboo, will incite readers, cause either disagreement or overwhelming support. So having the reproduction clinic as the setting, and in some ways as its own character, is certain to bring on debate What’s beautiful about this, is that hopefully, this kind of book can spark (no pun intended) civil and calm conversations about both sides of the issue.

In this book, the writing is strong and the characters were well drawn. Her use of going backwards in time was a welcome surprise. At times it worked well, but often led to too much repetition. I do appreciate her trying something different though. The many characters at this reproduction center were each there for different reasons. Not only abortion. Amen for having characters on either side of the coin to offer opposing points of view. The laws in Mississippi regarding abortion were brought to light especially those that protect the fetus, rather than the mother.

Finally, I learned a lot in this book as far as perspective and rash judgment calls. I also thought the running theme of father and daughter relationships was a good one.

Yet another wonderful book by Ms. Picoult! I was enthralled throughout the book and, as always, it makes you think about your views and how you come about them. I highly recommend this book!

George Goddard, a lone gunman, entered the only private center offering abortions in the state of Mississippi. He started shooting and soon took the people inside as hostages.

Thus begins Jodi Picoult’s newest novel. Some of the hostages were seeking abortions. Others were there as health professionals and finally some were seeking other women health services. Lt. Hugh McElroy was a trained hostage negotiator and the local police officer who was dealing with the shooter. Then Hugh discovered that his 15 year old daughter and his older sister were inside among the hostages. In the course of negotiations, George told Hugh that his attack on the clinic was in retribution for treatment of his teen aged daughter.

The story then goes backward to explain who each victim was and why they were in the clinic. The author examines the mind set of abortion activists as well as the anti abortion protestors outside the facility. She explains abortion procedures at several different stages of a pregnancy. She obviously did much research on the topic. The epilogue explains how the hostage situation ended.

I enjoyed the book and found it memorable. However I was confused by the reverse timeline for each character. It would have been an easier book to read if the action occurred in a forward chronological order rather than a backward one ending with the early morning activities of most of the main characters. When I got to the end of the story, I was left with questions and had to scroll back (not easy on an electronic device, to find the answers.

A Spark if Light was a very intriguing novel. It told the story of an abortion clinic and the various stories of the many employers and clients . Very early in the novel a hostage situation occurs. This novel made me question my thoughts on abortion and all the many lives that can be effected in so many different ways in one clinic. I am hoping for a possible sequel because I would like to follow these characters as they continue their life journey. You will certainly enjoy reading this fine novel .

I was disappointed in the heavy-handed message in this book. Picoult generally does a great job in showing both sides of an issue, but I felt that this book deviated from that philosophy. Additionally, there were several storylines that seemed forced and incomplete.

This book is FIRE! There were so many dynamic one liners in this book that had me hooping and hollering and waking my husband. Jodi Picoult did such a marvelous job tackling an incredibly difficult and controversial topic, and she did it with such grace and wisdom and (at least in my opinion) understanding for all sides of the abortion debate. The story is told in reverse, which at times was a bit confusing, especially at the beginning being thrown into a story with characters you don’t know yet, but the payoff at the end was so worth it. This would be an excellent book club pick!

First- big thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of A Spark of Light! I was very hesitant to read it at first, because I've been told that I wouldn't like Picoult's writing. The plot of this book drew me in, and I decided to give it a try. I was very surprised for two reasons- 1. That I actually enjoyed this book. Was it the best book I've ever read? No. But, I was hooked from the beginning and able to finish it with ease. 2. The plot of this book was an extremely difficult topic, and I was nervous that Picoult would shove whatever belief she has down my throat, via her writing. I was extremely surprised at how well both sides of the argument were written and represented.

A Spark of Light
My thanks to #NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review. As an avid, often rabid reader of Jodi Picoult, I was as bit taken aback by the format. I actually had to start over and read the first five or six chapters a second time. I have very little free time these days, so I read in fits and starts: I think this book would be best suited to someone who can spend some time dedicated to focusing on the story. The novel has a unique format where the story is told hour-by-hour . . . in reverse.
Jodi Picoult has always been able to draw the line between tragedy and crime, but in this case I was not truly engaged as a reader until the Author’s Notes at the very end. It was there, in those very last pages, that I felt, Picoult’s passion. A Spark of Light lacks well, that spark that ignites the Picoult reader and engulfs passion and then overcomes the reader with feelings they didn’t even know they had. This book lacked that passion, but it is beautifully written and gives credence to both sides of a very difficult issue.

"A Spark of Light" by Jodi Picoult has a very unique set up - the story is told in reverse order, starting with the "ending" and then filling us in on how the characters got there. The setting is called "The Center" and it is the single women's clinic in the state of Mississippi that provides women with abortions. A gunman takes over this women's center, holding individuals hostage. The story is told from several perspectives, but the most highlighted it feels like is the hostage negotiator and his daughter, who is inside The Center as a hostage. This book felt like a very special episode of Grey's Anatomy, it's sweeps, they need to get the ratings up, and an original cast member is leaving, levels of drama. There are parts of "Spark of Light" that I really enjoyed, but it was impossible to ignore these twists ( even more than the one mentioned) that just felt incredibly unnecessary. Also, Jodi Picoult took a very didactic approach with this book, it's informative and interesting, but it also completely pulled me out of the narrative and because of these two issues I gave this book three stars.

A compelling narrative and smoothly written, although a little bit of the strain of giving airtime to different sides of the issue shows - didactic at points. I think longtime fans will enjoy, if for the writing style and pretty well-sketched characters, if nothing else.

Whew what a read! It was at once so good it was hard to put down, but so intense that I had to take breaks. I definitely don't want to spoil a single thing for the next reader, so I'll just say here that there were so many twists at the end that I couldn't possibly see them all coming!

A spark of Light is a very well written novel. Great plot, characters and writing, as is always the case with Ms. Picoult’s books. My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my digital arc this is my unbiased review.

An ordinary day at the so called Center in Jackson, Mississippi. Women come there to get information about how to prevent a pregnancy, others to end an unwelcome one. Protesters outside belong to the everyday work as well as security measures before getting inside. But on this sunny days, things go wrong when a man with a gun walks in to revenge the grand-child he never had. How can these women dare to decide on another person’s life? George Goddard will teach them a lesson. Outside, Hugh McElroy will try everything to keep the number of victims low, especially since his sister and daughter are in the Center.

When I started the novel, I was fairly astonished even before getting to the first chapter: the novel is told from the end and starts in the late afternoon of that day. This is quite an interesting idea and admittedly I had some doubts if this might actually work out. But it does and suspense is not diminished at all, since there is still a lot to be revealed even when going through the story the wrong way around.

I read other novels of Jodi Picoult before and again, the author did completely fulfil my expectations. She once more chose a highly controversial topic to which you cannot find an easy solution. The women as well as the doctors who are in the Center at the moment the shooter enters all have their individual stories that led them there: a pro-life activist in disguise, a nurse who doubts her boyfriend’s motivation of marrying her and who wants to offer him the possibility of going on in life without her, another young woman who herself had to grow up knowing how it feels if you are not loved and only a burden, a girl who just wants to get a pill – you don’t feel like they didn’t think about what they do before they decided to go to the Center on that day. But the situation between life and death – their life and death – puts the decision they had taken to another test. Especially poignant is the constellation of having the detective in charge’s daughter in the clinic. This adds another very personal aspect to the whole story.

It is not a story about pro-life vs. abortion advocates. Even though this is the initial starting point, Picoult focuses on the individual characters and their respective situation. Neither does she put their decision to the test nor excuse any decision taken. It could have been another connecting element that brings those characters together, what they experience is the moment in life where all could be over and when you inevitably have to question yourself about what is important for you and if it has been worth living. I really like her style of wiring and particularly the characters she creates, thus for me, another remarkable novel not to be missed.

If there is a prize for courageous literature, Picoult deserves to win it. I have grown frustrated over the years as I have watched countless novelists dodge and weave to avoid the mere mention of abortion as a means to deal with an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, and I wanted to do cartwheels when I read the teaser for this book. I thank Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy, and the author and publisher for having the integrity to go there. This book is for sale now.

That said, this isn’t a fun read, and it in no way resembles the character based escapist fiction that is the hallmark of many of Picoult’s other novels. This one is about social justice, and fiction is an approachable medium with which to discuss it. Those seeking to avoid tension and who don’t want to think critically should read something else.

The story opens at a women’s clinic in the Deep South, and a shooter has just killed the owner of the clinic and taken others hostage. Our main characters are the shooter, George Goddard; Hugh McElroy, the hostage negotiator; Wren, Hugh’s daughter, who has come to the clinic without her father’s knowledge to procure contraception; and Louis, the clinic’s doctor. There are a host of second string characters, and they include clinic workers, clinic protesters, patients, and a spy that has wormed her way inside the clinic in search of the damning proof that fetal tissue is being sold illegally.

Because we start with the shooting and then work our way backward in time, with the narrative unspooling the background and viewpoint of each of about a dozen people, the first third of the book is agonizing. I am not usually one to peek at the ending of a novel, but frankly I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t read the fine details until I knew who was going to make it out alive and who wasn’t. I suspect that some of the negative reviews I am seeing are because of this aspect of it. It’s a tribute to how effectively Picoult is able to create tension within a story, but she may have overshot the mark a wee bit.

The first half of the book examines the various reasons why some people are opposed to abortion, and it does it in painstaking detail. I began to feel as if she was doing the work of the Right-to-Lifers for them. More than anything, though, we see inside the troubled mind of the shooter himself. Goddard may be the best developed of the characters present here (though the story is primarily plot based in any case).
We also see the reasons why women choose to have an abortion, and we see the ambivalence and sometimes the regret of those that do so. In fact, my one real issue with this story is that there isn’t a single woman here that is having the procedure, not because she’s been raped or because she’s impoverished or abused, but because her contraception failed and she doesn’t want to be pregnant. These women exist; I know them. In fact, I have been one of them. Not every woman that seeks to terminate a pregnancy is traumatized, and apart from one character that passes in and out of the plot inside of a brief paragraph, these women are not represented here. But this is a relatively minor concern, and my rating reflects this.

Appropriately enough, the empirical voice of reason belongs to Louie Ward, the doctor. He’s seen a lot:
“Indeed, when the pro-lifers came to him to terminate a pregnancy and told him that they did not believe in abortion, Louie Ward said only one thing: Scoot down.” Louie respects the women that come to him, and during the conference the state requires him to have with those that have signed on for the procedure,

“He looked into the eyes of each of the women. Warriors, every one of them…They were stronger than any men he’d ever known. For sure, they were stronger than the male politicians who were so terrified of them that they designed laws specifically to keep women down…If he had learned anything during his years as an abortion doctor, it was this: there was nothing on God’s green earth that would stop a woman who didn’t want to be pregnant.”

I like the ending.

Picoult has done her homework here, observing abortions conducted at various stages of pregnancy and interviewing over one hundred women that have done this. Her end notes show the level of research on which this story is based. Few fiction writers go to such lengths, and I doff my metaphorical hat to her.

Highly recommended to feminists everywhere, as well as to the tiny sliver of the population that isn’t firmly planted in one camp or the other where the topic is concerned.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book. I have always enjoyed Jodi Picoult’s books and this is no exception. She pushes the limits, test the boundaries. This story takes you in reverse through a hostage situation at an abortion clinic. It made me think about my own beliefs and opinions, but more than that, it reinforces that every situation has more than one side to it, and maybe it we weren’t all set in our rigid ways, we might begin to understand each other.

Picoult does a good job of presenting various viewpoints on the issue of abortion in the story of a shooting at a women's health clinic, however, it seemed like a story and characters were secondary to the points she was trying to make so it wasn't a real engrossing novel.

I feel the author did a pretty good job of conveying how people on both sides of the abortion issue have come to their beliefs. She lets you really get inside the head of those who are going to have an abortion, or had an abortion. While the author and her afterwards seems to have chosen a side on this topic, she does not sugarcoat or white wash any of the facts.