Perfect Match

This post originally published June 1, 2010.

Author: Jodi Picoult
Published: 2002
Publisher: Washington Square Press
351 pages (paperback)
 
Summary: As an assistant district attorney, Nina Frost regularly deals with child sexual abuse cases and works her hardest to try to make a legal system with too many loopholes keep criminals in jail. However, when her own 5 year old son Nathaniel reveals that he has been raped, Nina suddenly feels incredibly helpless. She knows that the legal system will, at best, put the abuser in jail for a few years and at worst, the abuser will walk free, not to mention the trauma that is sure to happen in having Nathaniel in court. Nina decides she must do everything and anything she can to protect her son, leading her to go kill the suspect herself.

My Thoughts: The raiding of my sister’s Jodi Picoult collection continues! This is another stunning story by Jodi Picoult, one that I loved very much. After reading Change of Heart and only sort of liking that one, my sister recommended I read Perfect Match because she herself liked it a lot. And now, I do too! What makes this story extra addictive is that while it is not properly a mystery story, it has elements of one that keep you wondering what Nathaniel (who goes mute at several points in the story) is trying to say, who the real abuser is, what lab report findings turn out to be, etc. I devoured this book in about ten hours time, I simply couldn’t put it down at all! While I didn’t feel particularly attached to any of the characters (least of all, Nina the main character — even Jodi Picoult admits she found it very difficult to like her!), it doesn’t matter because the story is so enthralling and interesting … kind of like reading a really crazy story in a newspaper; you don’t really care about any of the people involved, but the story is so intriguing, you just have to keep reading.

You may have noticed by now, if you regularly keep up with my blog postings/rants, that I usually end up not liking the ending of Jodi Picoult books. Unfortunately, this holds true for this book as well. I find that Picoult tends to write happy endings a lot, happy endings that make little sense realistically.

!!! SPOILERS !!! If this story was real, the verdict handed to Nina at the end of the novel is absolutely appalling. (Then again, there are a lot of real life cases with verdicts that make you think, “What was the judge/jury thinking?!”) At the end of the novel in the bonus material section, Picoult admits that she didn’t want the family to be split up at the end of the novel so she went with “that freaky clause in the Maine books” (translate: a rarely used and kind of ridiculous clause that says if you were extremely angry at the time of killing someone, it’s okay) in order to force the ending to make semi-sense. I personally think the ending is really lame but I guess it just sort of enforces the overall message in the book — that there is no real justice in the world. She maliciously killed an innocent person (and it was filmed and witnessed by over a hundred people) and basically got away with it with the excuse that she was SUPER ANGRY at the time, there it is justified. Ridiculous. !!! END SPOILERS !!!

Fortunately, That Ending only accounts for the last twenty or thirty pages of the novel and not the whole thing. Overall, this novel was an amazing, addicting read that I’m sure most people will enjoy greatly. Whether or not you like the ending is, of course, based on your own perspectives and opinions, but even if you find yourself shocked and disliking it like I did, the greater portion of the story I’m sure more than makes up for it. This thought provoking story will leave you deep in thought about laws, morals and ethics in our real world; it will affect you deeply.

My Rating: 5/5