Mad Honey

Mad Honey (2022) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan, was the library book group’s February selection, and, as sometimes happens, I started reading with no background or expectations about the book. I’ve read other Picoult books (which I generally enjoyed), but I wasn’t familiar with the second author.

I was immediately hooked! We meet Olivia and her teenage son, star hockey player Asher. They live in her family home in Vermont, where she is a beekeeper and has a honey business. We learn that she moved there when Asher was 6 and she left Asher’s father, the abusive cardiac surgeon she had married.

In alternating chapters, we meet Lily, Asher’s girlfriend, who had moved there for her senior year of high school, needing a fresh start after having lived in California and Seattle. Lily is a cellist, a survivor of a suicide attempt brought on by something–abuse by her father or other teenagers–we’re not yet sure. We do find out that she’s fallen for Asher and they seem to be deeply in love as teenagers can be, although sometimes he gets so angry that he shuts her out.

And then Olivia gets the call from Asher. He’s gone to Lily’s house, and found her at the bottom of the stairs, bloody and unresponsive. The police become involved, and, as her boyfriend, Asher is a prime suspect. Luckily Olivia’s brother, Jordan, is an accomplished criminal defense attorney who is semi-retired and can drop everything to come to Asher’s defense.

Interspersed among all of this are Olivia’s thoughts about keeping bees, and truths she has come to realize as she goes through her seasonal chores with the hives.

In reviews that I checked out during breaks in my reading, I read about a twist, or reveal, that happens about halfway through the book, during Asher’s trial. I will say no more but to confirm that I didn’t see it coming, but it is central to the story. An interesting technique is that Olivia’s chapters are told going forward in time, but Lily’s chapters are told going backwards in time.

I was so thirsty to find out how the story unfolded that I abandoned the audiobook as soon as my hold at the library came in and finished reading the paper copy. (I’m notorious for jumping ahead to assuage my anxiety about finding out what happens and I can’t do that with an audiobook!)

Mad Honey was really well-done; it was suspenseful, informative, and a great story. If you’re a Picoult fan, a fan of courtroom dramas, and can tolerate stories about past abusive relationships, don’t miss it. And it was free of anti-fat bias.