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.

I appreciated the author's attempt here, but maybe I have read too many similar stories recently with the 'Sliding Doors' theme - what if the character did X instead of Y? There's been a few on the market recently and maybe I am finding this story line played out. I do think avid Picoult fans will embrace this one!

Oh, I am gutted. There are so many reasons to read this one. I’m lucky that netgalley allowed me to read the ARC. Well written, beautifully crafted, and researched brilliantly, this is one for the ages. My heart wishes it were daylight so I could take a long walk to think about all of the things that happened here. Trying to post this review, tears in my eyes, is difficult. I may wait a month and read it again. My heart, oh my heart.

Just two years ago, in my review of Jodi Picoult’s Small Great Things, I related that “when a friend and former library co-worker basically sniffed her disapproval when I told her I liked Jodi Picoult’s books, our friendship was changed forever.” I worked for several years in public libraries and tried not to be judgmental of people’s reading preferences, or to let the fact that someone thought Danielle Steel wrote great literature to negatively impact my opinion of them. But really, I don’t get it. I know JP is writing for a mass market – and sometimes her resolutions might be just a bit too neat for snooty readers. But I’ll admit right up front, I am a sucker for a well-plotted story that makes me think about a social issue or two along the way.

Now that I’ve finished reading The Book of Two Ways, I keep thinking about it. So that’s a good thing. On the other hand, the protagonist, Dawn Edelstein, really annoyed me near the end of the book…so not such a good thing. I learned a LOT about Egyptology. Good thing. A bit more than I wanted to know…hmmm, not great. So I’m still not sure how to rate it…maybe by the time I finish this, it will all be clear to me?

Dawn is on a plane that crashes, and she is one of the few survivors. Just before the crash, thoughts flashed through her mind…surprisingly, not of her physicist husband Brian or her daughter Meret, but of Wyatt. Fifteen years earlier, Dawn was a grad student in Egypt, working alongside Wyatt on her doctorate from Yale when she got a call that her mother was dying. She flew home, cared for her mother in hospice (where she met and fell in love with Brian), then found herself in debt and responsible for her young brother. Unable to continue her studies, she married, had a child, and became a death doula – a career she has been dedicated to for years. When the airline offers the survivors of the crash transportation to anywhere they want to go, she heads for Egypt rather than home to Boston. At the time of the crash, she’s nearing forty: “…I blow my nose and look in the mirror. I’m at the age where that’s a surprise.” She’s clearly looking to answer the “what if?” question as to what her life would have been like if she had taken another path.

There are two huge subjects, each related to one of the men in her life: Egyptology and physics. TBH, in the Egypt chapters, there was a boatload of detail (including drawings) about pharaohs, coffins, burial, excavation…you get the idea. Her thesis was about the “…book of Two Ways, the first known map of the afterlife.” The detail is voluminous (Jodi definitely does her research) and isn’t particularly dense or difficult to understand. For example, talking about festivals, she writes “…mostly, they would get drunk and have sex—it was like Coachella, every time the Nile overflowed.”

Her husband Brian, the physicist, is a terrific character. He clearly adores Dawn (although not always expressed exactly as she would like). There were several passages about his field (quantum physics) that could have been dull and beyond comprehension for the average reader, but he explains the concepts in a way that is clear and concise. I loved it, even reading several aloud to anyone who would listen (LOL, being in lockdown, there’s only one target at this time! But my husband agreed about these passages.

In addition to Egyptology and Physics, the third topic is death, and there are many opportunities to discuss various aspects of death as the Dawn’s chosen path led her to her career as a death doula. Working with a client, she is asked what happens after death and responds “I have no idea. … But then again, in utero, we probably can’t imagine any other existence. And once we get here, we don’t remember that.”

Discussing the fear of death, Dawn wonders “Why are people so afraid of dying? Well, that’s easy. Because it’s hard for us to conceive of a world without us in it.” And“…we do a shitty job of intellectually and emotionally preparing for death, How can you enjoy life if you spend every minute fearing the end of it?”

Dawn believes that “No one knows what to say to someone who’s dying. Everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing. It’s more important to be there than to be right.” (This totally resonated with me personally, as I have seen it be very true for a person diagnosed with a serious illness.) She counsels caregivers as well, providing good advice when she says there are “…five things we need to say to people we love before they die…I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.”

The unique thing about the book is that as her story unfolds, Dawn’s two possible futures are told side by side, leaving her character (and the reader) to confront the questions she’s never truly asked: What makes a life well lived? What is left after we die? Are we making choices, or do our choices make us who we are?

I don’t do spoilers, so I won’t go into her dilemma or the way it is resolved in the book. I’ll just say that even though I was SUPER annoyed with Dawn, this will be great for book clubs, will be loved by Jodi Picoult fans, and will likely earn her some new fans. Five stars, and thanks to Random House-Ballantine and NetGalley for the copy in exchange for my honest review.

I am conflicted on how I feel about this book. Of course, I loved that there was an element of ancient history which is not something normally found in any form of contemporary fiction and Jodi Picoult is such a wonderful writer but I didn't feel like the story got the conclusion I was desperate for. However, it fits the historical context of "The Book of Two Ways" so perfectly. I feel like it will take me weeks to process this book but of course, I couldn't put it down.

You always know with a Picoult book to expect the unexpected and this one certainly fulfills that aspect. I enjoyed her background of the culture and study of Egypt, although at times I did get lost in the details. I also loved the introduction of the services of a death doula, a job I had never heard of. The characters were well developed and easy to identify with in the book. I love a good fiction novel which also educates and thus one truly fits the bill. Thank you Netgalley and Jodi Picoult for a wonderful book.