I finished Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult last Thursday {I’m a fast reader}. And I’m left feeling that I’m 62% sure I read it before. Maybe? Years ago, I went on a Jodi Picoult tear, reading everything of hers that I could get my hands on. And Perfect Match was left in my PBS wish pile. So maybe I hadn’t read it.
I feel like if I had, it would’ve left a mark on my brain. But at the same time, reading it {maybe again} as a mother, makes me see events & characters completely different. Where before I would’ve felt very bad for 5 year old Nathaniel & his mother Nina as they dealt with his sexual assault, now I was haunted to the point of almost having to put the book down. Perfect Match definitely caused me to open up some communication lines with the husband over when to discuss stranger danger etc with the babies.
I won’t go into all the details & spoil this book for you, but as a mother of young children, the thought of Lucy or Zach being harmed by someone we know or don’t know or by whom we entrust their care, scares the shit out of me. And I honestly don’t know what I would or wouldn’t do if that situation occurred. So I can’t blame Nina for the actions she takes in Perfect Match. As a county DA who prosecuted sexual predators, she knew the way our system can {& does} often fail the young victims.
Perfect Match is yet another {like Lone Wolf} Jodi Picoult book that I couldn’t put down. You know that I normally read while pumping. The last two novels, I brought home with me & had to read at night before bed to get just a few more pages into it before the day was done.
Perfect Match is one of Picoult’s earlier books, so while it’s told from multiple points of view {first person from both Nathaniel & Nina}, the different voices don’t have their own fonts in this one. But the author does a great job with diction & sentence structure so that you can easily tell which character is currently telling the story.
I’d recommend Perfect Match to any Jodi Picoult fan. But I’d warn a new or young mom before hoping into this one blind.