Reviewed by Linda Gallagher

For eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duty. Parents and children alike are best friends - so it’s no surprise that in high school Chris and Emily’s friendship blossoms into something more. They’ve been soul mates since they were born.

When the midnight calls come in from the hospital, no one is prepared for the appalling truth: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head as part of an apparent suicide pact. The gun holds a single unspent bullet that Chris tells police he intended for himself, but a local detective has doubts. And the Hartes and Golds, in a single terrifying moment, must face every parent’s worst fear: do we ever really know our children at all?

The Pact was the first Jodi Picoult novel that I read, I decided to try this author after reading many glowing reviews of her books. This book is about 500 pages, the chapters are not very long and for me this made it an ideal book to read on my commute one week.

Our main characters, Gus and James Harte and Melanie and Michael Gold have lived next door to each other for about 18 years and are best friends. The Hartes have a 17 year old son and a 14 year old daughter, Chris and Kate and the Golds have a 17 year old daughter, Emily.

Chris and Emily have been virtually inseparable since a 6 month old Chris was placed in the hospital cot beside newborn Emily. The plot is mainly based around the characters of Chris and Emily, even though Emily dies in the first paragraph of the book.

The chapters flick from the present to the past, firstly going back 17 years when Emily and Chris are born and there are subsequent flashbacks to when they are five years old, ten years old and so on and finally there are frequent flashbacks concentrating upon the moments around Emily’s death. I found this to be an easy-to-follow format. Also whilst the book is written in third person, the chapters are written from the view points of the different characters; namely members of the families or the lawyer, Jordan.

So Emily dies in the first paragraph of the book. She is shot dead and the question is: was it suicide or did Chris, who was the only person present do it?

From this point on, the book flicks between past and present. When we are in the past, the author builds up our knowledge of the two families and of Chris and Emily’s childhood friendship that turned into a relationship in their teens. When we are in the present, the book deals with the feelings of the two sets of parents or we follow Chris’s journey through to the trial for Emily’s murder.

There are a few other subplots thrown in along the way, one about sexual abuse and after the death of Emily, Chris started to talk with a psychologist. I thought that this would lead to some interesting dialogue but in fact neither of these threads were developed very far and I was left wondering what the point of them was.

The chapters aim to explore what is happening with the different people involved, but with the chopping and changing of the viewpoints it was being written from, I didn’t think that there was sufficient time to develop any of the characters in depth and I didn’t really feel very involved with any of them. Chris is the one focussed upon most often but I still did not emphasize with him and I didn’t care much what happened to him at his trial either.

I found many of the storylines quite implausible and whilst trying not to give away too many details of the book I will mention a few here. The first is that Emily and Chris would end up in a relationship, the book presents this as something that was bound to happen however as you read the flashback chapters it becomes clear that these two children were brought up virtually as brother and sister and I thought it was therefore quite unlikely. I thought that the author was trying too hard to show how inseparable they have always been, particularly when they shared a cot when Emily was a few hours old, something I found sickly sweet and naff.

Another concerned Chris’s time in prison awaiting trial. He is a 17 year old middle class school boy; there is one incident, Chris gets into trouble but does not rat on the other prisoner involved. From here on Chris apparently becomes a hero in the prison and receives privileges normally afforded only to those prisoners right at the top of the pecking order. I have no experience of prison life, but I thought this seemed unlikely.

The last section of the book concerns the trial itself and I was surprised to find that Chris’s mother is referred to as the star witness and is the last defence witness to take the stand. Well she wasn’t at the crime scene and she isn’t there to provide an alibi, it would seem that the central plank of defence in this murder trial is to be based around the defendant’s mother saying what a nice boy he has always been. Chris had been awaiting trial for eight months and this is the best his lawyer could do? In fact I would say that this was more for the author’s convenience as the mother’s testimony leads more easily into what happens next.

I was very disappointed with the ending, it was predictable but also it was poorly written, in fact I would suggest that the author just downed pen. I could not believe that was it and was not aware that I was so close to the end of the book because the last forty pages were devoted to a discussion group and excerpts from the author’s other books.

This book purports to be a mixture between a love story and a legal drama but I did not think it worked on either count. I found the love story unintentionally disturbing and whilst there was drama in the courtroom, by this time I did not care about the character it concerned and further I thought it was quite far-fetched drama.

Having said all that, I did find the book easy to read and although it is not my cup of tea, I believe other people would like it. If you have enjoyed her other books then I think you would like this one because as far as I can tell they have a similar formula to this one which clearly works for some.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: Jodi Picoult

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