This is one of my favorite authors but I have to say that this book read more like a text book at times than a novel. I have always appreciated her ability to weave fact based information with a fictional story, but this time it felt like it was strained. I was disappointed and it made it hard to read at times.

I was given an ARC on #netgalley to review Picoult's newest book The Book of Two Ways. I have been an avid reader of her books and love them. This book, however was a huge disappointment. Whereas I understand the story line, I feel as though I could become and Egyptologist after reading this book. Years ago I was a social studies teacher and taught some Ancient Egypt material, this went into WAY more detail than anything I ever taught my students! Read this book if you are interested in Egypt... I finished the book, but I was forcing myself to finish.

The ending was great, and there were some suprises that I did not see coming, but it was a difficult read.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of THE BOOK OF TWO WAYS by Jodi Picoult in exchange for my honest review.***

I feel like I won the ARC lottery when I received notice that I had been approved to review Jodi Picoult’s latest masterpiece, which is not hyperbole.

THE BOOK OF TWO WAYS is filled not just with plot, but also voluminous information on Egyptology with sprinkles of information on physics. Beneath all the facts is the story of Dawn Edelstein and the roads taken and not taken.

A plane crash give Dawn the opportunity to go back to Egypt to revisit a dissertation and never finished and a love with Wyatt she left unfinished. Or she Venmo go home to a surly teenage daughter Meret and husband Brian, who didn’t stray physically, but emotionally. I was squarely #TeamWyatt. Their chemistry dropped from the pages, where Brian made me yawn, although personally I’m more of a Brian type.

I had some difficult connecting with the Egyptology information, as it’s not a personal area of interest or an area I’d choose to explore. I found myself feeling out of my league and skimming parts of this and the physics information. I understood Schrödinger’s cat more before reading pages about how the cat could be both dead and alive. For readers hoping for a straight story, this might be a turnoff. I was perfectly fine enjoying the richness of Picoult’s storytelling omitting the certain parts.

Few writers have Picoult’s skill to immerse herself in exhaustive research and weave that information so seamlessly into a story as Picoult and fellow New Englander Chris Bohjalian. I am in awe of their talent.

Dawn is a death doula, which is like a hospice Jill-of-all-trades. I have a friend who just began work in this field, the work of metaphoric angels. I liked Dawn very much, even when I didn’t understand her choices or decisions.

THE BOOK OF TWO WAYS is a showcase of the Picoult’s prowess as a storyteller. It may not appeal to all her readers. I hope her fans will read without feeling intimidated by material which may be beyond their areas of interest and that they can take the parts they embrace and leave the rest for others.

’To die will be an awfully big adventure.’
-- J. M. Barrie

A story filled with remembrances of people, some who lived long ago in Egypt, buried in tombs, and some who passed more recently. Some memories still haunt Dawn, the choices she’s made through her life, as well as what she’s learned from her interactions with others, the stories they’ve shared. Stories that aren’t her stories, but have become a part of her. Dawn used to work toward her goal of being an Egyptologist, and in another life spent time in Egypt pursuing that, alongside Wyatt. But that comes to an unexpected end when she is needed back at home to care for her much younger brother. Eventually, she marries, and a daughter comes along after that. A happy-ish family, although their daughter Meret, now a young teenager, is struggling with confidence and body-image issues, along with the usual teenage-parent problems, and parental frustrations.

These days she spends her work hours as a death doula, a woman who helps those in their final stages of life, as well as their family members. Preparing for it, assisting them along the way, and finally through the last transitions. She begins each day by remembering them, a way to keep them, their memories alive.

This story goes back and forth in time and place, when Dawn is in Egypt, and when she is in Boston. Early on, it took me a bit to make that adjustment, and occasionally I had to restrain from looking up every. little. thing, but I ended up loving the different timelines, as well as the way this story slowly evolved. I loved the interjections of thoughts she had, such as when she talks about when her daughter Meret was little and used to say lasterday, as a reference for any point in time in the past. I loved reading about her interactions as a death doula, the love and care she gave to those in her care. That being said, I still felt that it would have been an even better story if the scientific aspects of this had been pared down, even a little.

This is about the choices we make in life, and about our life, along with the circumstances that force us to make choices, how they can present us with alternate opportunities. The regrets, looking back on the road not taken, the things we feel we need to share, the people we feel a need to see as we face the end of life, or even the end of a way of life.


Pub Date: 22 Sep 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, Ballantine Books

“The Book of Two Ways” by Jodi Picoult

Impressive!! The author did a great deal of research on Egyptology. A GREAT deal of research. I timeline or better explanations about it all in front of the book as a reference would have helped immensely for those not educated in any form of this type of study. Yet, on the other half, a heartwarming and heartbreaking love story comes through this novel...well maybe a few and in many different forms.

How do you know if that first major love is who you really were meant to be with as vs the one you came to love and built your life around? How do you know if you have left half of yourself in a place you thought you would initially return to and fulfill your dream and goal attached to it? Will the “other” life be just as fulfilling and fill that “empty” spot? Be the place you were meant to always be?

Picoult brings forth another amazing read relationship wise that has the main character question her current life and marriage where she should be in her life. She has carried the “what if I had returned to Egypt” in her life, even subconsciously for over 15 years. But when her marriage hits a huge speed bump and with the push of one of her clients, Dawn is assessing her life more and goes back to Egypt to see if that is part of the answer to the new hole in her body.

When a random science DNA kit from her daughter took around Christmas turns up with one very noticeable finding, everyone’s life has immediately changed, to what degree she is not sure. All she knows is her marriage is further on the rocks, her daughter is left trying to figure out some things and her second trip to Egypt ends very differently.

While I know some have researched all the Egyptian history as the book uncovers, others have skipped the Egyptian sections, I did the best that I could looking up a few things but was very interested how the connections between Dawn’s life and experiences there and in Boston and observed how they Egyptian history often related to meant aspects of one’s life in several different ways. I was interested what she learned and what she was running from. It gave extra insight to all of the main characters as well as showed a great deal of their personality, throughout the novel.

Such a great plot line, and a great way to intersperse Dawn’s past, present and how she views the future. Yet the beyond collegiate Egyptian history that was super intense, definitely took away from an another amazing read. Cutting the history in half, so it is clearly understood by every reader, would bring forth another amazing novels, every reader has come to expect and ravish.

Rating: 4.4
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


** I have voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this novel. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I almost gave up on this book. It started out like a textbook. Lots of boring details but I’m so glad I stuck with it. Loved the story and the different timelines.

Well Jodi Picoult, I am sad to say but your book gave me a headache. While I can appreciate Ms. Picoult's ability to research Egyptian beliefs and tranditions and apply that knowledge into a story, I felt that she was a little too heavy handed when it comes to writing an enjoyable fictional book. Beyond the constant research I had to do to understand Ms. Picoult's research I found a love story and a story about Dawn, who is a death doula (which I found to be more facinating than the Egyptian studies). We start our story with Dawn sitting on a plane as it is about to crash and miraciously she survives! When she is checked by the doctor, the airline tells her they will fly her anywhere she wants to go. Instead of choosing to go home to her family she chooses to go to Egypt, to find her long lost love, or the one that got away Wyatt. The love story itself was lack luster. While I did enjoy reading about her history with both her husband and Wyatt, I couldnt seem to get pass the Egyptian textbook that this love story was sprinked in.

Jodi - if you ever decide to write a book that focuses on the job of a death doula, I'm your girl, but for now, I think we must part our ways.

Dawn Edlestein, a wife and a mother living in Boston is on a plane when something goes wrong and there's an emergency landing. As the plane goes down, she thinks of someone she met during grad school at Yale - Wyatt Armstrong, an archaeologist.

Dawn survives the crash and is offered a ticket to her final destination of choice by the airline. However, instead of going back home to Boston to her husband Brian and her daughter Meret she impulsively jumps on a plane and heads to Egypt where she finds Wyatt at a dig site. There she hopes to complete her dissertation that she started at Yale fifteen years prior on The Book of Two Ways - the first known map of the afterlife.

What follows becomes a "Sliding Doors" type of narrative where chapters alternate and follow Dawn's life in Egypt with Wyatt and in Boston with Brian and Meret.

This book is all about the road not taken, the one that got away, second chances and choices. And the most important question; do we make decisions or do our decisions make us?

From the first sentence in this book I was hooked and stayed up reading it well into the night. The descriptions of Egypt really served as a way to transport you to this hot, dusty site in the middle of nowhere and into tombs rich with history.

I found Dawn to be a very well constructed character, in the way that she is flawed and realistic and struggles with a lot of the choices we struggle with on a daily basis - mainly the idea of "What if?"

I enjoyed the way the book alternated chapters between two narratives as well as filling in the context with flashbacks to the past. Jodi Picoult is a master story teller and this really shines through in this book.

This story will also break your heart in the best way - I definitely found myself crying a bit throughout and while the ending wasn't exactly what I expected and I can't say that I was completely satisfied but it was true and in line to the very essence of the book.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

I want to thank NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and author Jodi Picoult for providing me with an ARC of this novel!

I am so, so grateful to have received this novel early. I have been a huge Picoult fan ever since I first stumbled upon her books, and I make it a point to check out all of her new work.

The Book of Two Ways did not disappoint. As a licensed Funeral Director, I loved that this surrounded the concept of death and how we deal with it. We follow our main character Dawn who is entering middle age as a wife and a mother. She has two amazing achievements in her back pocket; she has been pursuing a Doctorate and discovering ancient Egyptian artifacts, and she is also a Death Doula who helps others come to terms with end of life decisions. Along with these two paths, Dawn also has two men in her life that she must choose between, all while keeping her daughter, Meret, at the forefront. This book will make you think and make you LEARN. Picoult has a gift for opening the hearts of her readers, and this book was no different. The Egyptian narrative with some Irish superstitions sprinkled in were so interesting and really added some meat onto the bones of this novel. Picoult is ever-evolving; she never fails to amaze me with the wide range of concepts she is willing to cover and open our hearts to.

Thank you to those named above for the chance to read and review this novel!

Dawn is married to Brian and has a teenage daughter. They live in the Boston area. Dawn is hired by people about to die, and takes care of all the things that need doing as well as providing moral support. She survives a plane crash only to book a trip to Egypt instead of home to Boston. While in college, Dawn worked as an Egyptologist, and worked with Wyatt on uncovering crypts and translating etchings. Dawn had left Egypt when her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and didn't return to Egypt after her mother passed. Now, she wants to find Wyatt and see what happens...

I absolutely adore Jodi Picoult. Her story of an Egyptologist, however, taught me much more than I really wanted to know about Egypt. Really tried but had to put it down. To me, reading is an enjoyment not a school lesson in such detail.

I was so excited to get an ARC from NetGalley of this new Jodi Picoult book, I started it immediately and slammed into the wall.. I jyst couldn't get through each page. It was like reading a college textbook on Egyptolgy. The parts describing Dawn's career as a Death Doula were very interesting and I wished there were more, but I found myself finding any reason to put this book down. I have loved most other Jodi Picoult books, and maybe this book got better.. I really tried to get through it to give a review as my part to NetGalley for the ARC copy, but just couldn't finish.. Gave up st 30 %

I am a huge fan of Jodi Picoult and to date have read every one of her books. I have to say this is the first time I was actually disappointed. I found the flow of the story bogged down by so much historical detail. I felt like there was less background story regarding the main characters. The story of the balance between life and dying and the road we chose in life as opposed to the one not taken gets lost between all the Egypytology and quantum physics. Her characters were well developed and you really wanted both men to win but I also would have liked closure. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book pre-publication. I appreciate that we are able to be honest with our reviews.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. Picoult is a master as usual. It was quite heavy on the Egyptology but don't let that deter you from the bigger story and the lesson of it. The question of the story is based on the notion of what if your life went another way. Definitely recommend. Coming Sep 2020

This novel should come with a warning:
It’s TEXTBOOK TOP HEAVY.....
“Mummies and Deadies” interweave with complexities of life - love - birth -
death coaching -
character backstories -
superstitions -
philosophical narration - sarcastic, competitive and flirtatious dialogue - marriage -lovers - parenting - betrayals - secrets & lies...and other messy relationship complications.

“There is a literary text in Ancient Egyptian that says the gods made magic so that people could ward off misfortune. And yet, although you might be able to diminish something bad, you still couldn’t prevent it from happening”.

The heavy archaeology and Egyptology details hinder a natural elegiac rhythmic reading flow.
The author did extensive impressive research —
but the reader will also need to research the authors research, to gain a better knowledge and understanding of it all....
Unless.....
like one reviewer said, she skipped over the Egyptology details. But then what’s the point?

Sometimes it took me 40 minutes to finish ONE KINDLE PAGE....
Because....
I had to look up names, details, history, science, artists, scholars, and other historical information.
I wish I had been warned ahead of time of the HIGH PROBABILITY that I would need to STUDY Jodi Picoult’s research myself.
It took me two weeks to finish this book....( long for me).
It was often maddening, draining, ( sometimes interesting)... but a heck of a lot of personal work for me to read up on:
...hieroglyphs,
...photogrammetry,
...geomatics,
...digital mapping in 3-D
compared to linear measuring,
...hieroglyphics & software technology,
...epigraphy, ( ancient Greek study of inscriptions),
...Djehutynakht ( an ancient Egyptian) who was known for his painted outer coffin ( commonly called Bersha coffin)....
...archaeological Coffin Texts....[The Book of Two Ways]
... performance artist: Marina Abramovic
...oppositional defiant disorder...
...sloughing off skin and brain cells
...holding therapy
...fat basenji
...paleography...
...renaissance masters and French painters ( Manet)...
...Jean/Francois Champollion ( French scholar, philologist, and orientalist),
...the tombs of necropolis and the tomb Djehutynakht
AND....
... quantum mechanics:
“We’re all made up of molecules, like those electrons, if you zoom in and zoom in and zoom in, everything we do is explained by quantum mechanics”.

I questioned if readers would enjoy the heavy loaded details.
I questioned if whether or not I could recommend this book to my friends?
Yes, .... but ‘only’ with ‘advance warning’ and preparedness to ‘study’ the parts not familiar with - rather than skip over the history —
Or again I ask: “then why bother?”

“The last datable hieroglyphic inscription was written by a Nubian priest visiting Philae in 394 B.C.E., because even when the Byzantine emperor closed all the temples, he still let the Nubians come workshop Isis. Then the entire language was forgotten for fifteen hundred years— until the Rosetta Stone was founded in 1799. Written in demotic, hieroglyphs, and Greek, it’s an incredibly boring tax about tax benefits and temple priests— but because it bore the same message in three languages, it provided the code needed to crack the meaning of Ancient Egyptian writing. In 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion published the first translation of hieroglyphs”.


So, for me, this book became ‘textbook’ 101-learning.... Four thousand years of history.....
mixed with trying to get to know the protagonist -Dawn Edelstein-better. She was not an easy person to feel close to.
Dawn questioned the life she was living with her husband Brian. It was clear that she loved her daughter Meret — and valued her job as a ‘death doula’ and her clients,( especially Win)....
But....
Dawn never stopped loving Wyatt Armstrong....( her Yale grad school heartthrob colleague, and competitor).

Wyatt often called Dawn, ‘Olive’. To Wyatt’s credit ( and Jodi Picoult’s playfulness with intimacy), Wyatt’s flirtatious love expression toward Dawn was mockingly cute!

“In spite of all that has happened in the past six weeks— from the days spent trying to repair the sieve of my marriage, to Win’s letter and the trip I made to London; from my last-minute decision to go to Egypt, to reuniting with Wyatt and the unearthing coffin— getting to this point feels both monumental and inevitable”.

“There is nothing –– nothing—like being the one to discover a piece of the world that has gone missing”.

My final conclusion.... there is some enjoyment, mystery suspense... some interesting history...
But do not go into this book blindly.
Be aware of the facts that it’s heavy loaded with facts!!!

As for the ‘male/female/male’ theme in this book( Dawn/Brian/Wyatt.... its a little Lifetime-movie-ish.
Not necessarily a negative - but....it’s wise to be aware of it being what it is.

Personally, I was hooked enough to invest my time in this book— but I was also frustrated with all the time it took.
Simultaneously, a double edge sword reading experience was a mixture of positives and negatives.

Thank you Netgalley, Random house publishing/Ballantine, and Jodi Picoult

A beautifully written novel depicting a “what if” scenario we all like to consider. The storyline was fascinating and the main character sympathetic. Highly recommended.

Jodi Picoult never disappoints. This fascinating novel transports us back and forth between Massachusetts and Egypt as Dawn struggles to choose between her life almost two decades ago and her life in the present. Highly unusual circumstances allow her to travel to Egypt to find the two great loves she abandoned over 16 years earlier - Egyptology and Wyatt. Who does not think about "What might have been?", the road not taken? In this novel - laced with fascinating stories about ancient Egypt and interpretations of quantum physics - one can experience the emotional turmoil through Dawn, and maybe even come up with the answer to your own question.
As always, this work has been meticulously researched and Picoult again magically weaves this knowledge meaningfully through this tale of second guesses and second chances.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

Jodi Picoult writes thought provoking novels, and this one is no exception. Dawn is a death doula, a mother and a wife. It is not the life she once imagined for herself, and when her plane crashes, she is haunted that the last person she thinks of is not her husband, but of Wyatt Anderson, the one that got away. Told in alternating points of time that ebb and flow throughout the novel, Dawn questions her choices that led her to her current life, and wonders what might have been if she'd made different choices.

This isn't a book that is a beachy, easy read. It's one that you have to sink into and stay in the narrative so you don't get lost, but I love that. It questions everything about life and death, and how a single decision can change the trajectory of your future. Dawn is torn by the past and the present, and what she wants for her future. She makes choices that may rip her family apart.

Rating (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being excellent)
Quality of writing: 5
Pace: 5
Plot development: 4
Characters: 4
Enjoyability: 4
Ease of Reading: 4

Overall rating: 4 out of 5

Will you have regrets as you leave this world? Do you question your choices and wonder where a different path might have taken you? Would you be happier? What would it be like? Dawn Edelstein reflected upon these questions after she survived a terrible plane crash. She regretted not finishing her studies in Egypt because she had to leave to care for her dying mother in Boston. She also questioned leaving behind her true love Wyatt. She was currently married to Brian and had a beautiful daughter Meret in Boston with a job as a death doula. She agonized over continuing on with her life as it is or choosing the life she left behind years ago .The intertwining story of Dawns client Win added insight to why Dawn was deeply questioning her life. Even though death is an uncomfortable topic I found this part of the book deeply touching and beautifully written. The history of the Egyptian burial sites was also interesting but could have been cut down some to help the flow of the story. I enjoyed this book so much! It touched me in a deep emotional way that I can't even explain right now. I need time to process it.