Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

"In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five... In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge." – Chapter 1, pg. 5

“Newborns reminded her of tiny Buddhas, faces full of divinity. It didn’t last long, though. When Lacy saw those same infants a week later at their regular checkups, they had turned into ordinary – albeit tiny – people. That holiness, somehow, disappeared, and Lacy was always left wondering where in this world it might go.” – Chapter 1, pg. 15

“He pictured his life as a graph. Normal was a line that stretched on and on, teasing its way closer to an axis but never really reaching it. He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that doesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.” – Chapter 6, pg. 130

“So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of them, you swallowed them whole. Love was sustenance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.”
– Chapter 7, pg. 173

“Children didn’t make their own mistakes. They plunged into the pits they’d been led to by their parents.” – Chapter 9, pg. 286

“Something still exists as long as there’s someone around to remember it. Everyone would remember Peter for nineteen minutes of his life, but what about the other nine million?” – Chapter 14, pg. 450

So those were some of my favorite book quotes from Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult.

This was my first Jodi Picoult read. Someone suggested it for our subdivision’s book club. Then after everyone hated on it, they decided Picoult has been churning out too many books at too fast a rate (Dean Knootz, anyone?). Maybe I’m too much the romantic, but this book would have been

gold for me if the surprise ending had turned out just a little bit differently. (Note: Spoilers ahead... as always). Josie randomly shooting her boyfriend was ridiculous! Sure, I get that he was an asshole to her and she felt trapped and fake and blah blah blah. But was that really incentive enough to send a bullet through his stomach point blank? No. I'm sorry Picoult, but that was beyond believable. The way I would have ended it? Two guns would have slid out of Peter's bag. Matt would have immediately grabbed one, aimed it at Peter and begun to taunt him. Josie would then have a REAL motive to kill Matt: To stop him from killing Peter. Sooo much better.