Nineteen Minutes

Nineteen Minutes
By: Jodi Picoult
Time to read: A few days
Pages: about 350

I absolutely love Jodi Picoult. I have read every book she's written, and for the most part, loved every single one of them. Of course, this book is no different.

Josie Cormier has it all. She is beautiful, in the popular crowd, and has the boyfriend that everyone is jealous of. Peter Houghton is the complete opposite of Josie. He is bullied relentlessly and only has one friend. When the two were children they used to be the best of friends, but as Josie became more popular, she began to remove her self from Peter. Which, she may have realized on March 6, 2007, that this may have been a big mistake on her part.

On that morning, Peter walks into his high school carrying 4 guns, and shoots and kills 10 people...injuring countless others. Every single life in the small New Hampshire town of Sterling is changed forever. Josie lives through the massacre, but her boyfriend Matt is killed.

As par to all Picoult books, a long court case is involved. At first, Josie's mother, Alex, was the presiding judge, but she had to remove herself when the lawyers threatened to put Josie on the stand. Also, another trait of Picoult books, a twist at the end that isn't predicted, is included in Nineteen Minutes.

This book really makes the reader think about their actions. High school may have been a long time ago for some of Picoult's readers, but to see Peter treated the way he is in this book is heartbreaking. I wanted to call my mom, who is a high school principal, and beg her to not just let students who are bullied fall into the crowd like Peter. Nineteen Minutes came out a little bit before the Virginia Tech shootings this fall, so I think that only makes the book more powerful in this day and age.

Read this book, read Jodi's other books...just enjoy her great writing and story weaving.