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Well this would be a great book for someone who has never heard of gay people or Christians or pro-life people or procreation or anything really. Every single argument and character in the book was a cliché exaggerated stereotype that's been said 1,000 times before. The two "sides" were so polarized; every one of the Christians were portrayed as politically conservative in every way, and usually cruel, closed minded and frankly unintelligent. The LGBT characters were shown as exclusively pro-choice, atheist, sassy or rude, and full of unnecessary monologues about their sexuality or persecution. Gay Christians exist. Pro-life and conservative atheists exist. The pastor was portrayed as not even having basic spiritual or biblical arguments. Christians don't constantly answer every question with "the Bible says this end of story." Gay couples are not always sexually or politically liberal. It felt like a book written by someone who has never interacted with either community and was trying to create an exaggerated introduction to gay Christian and pro life isues based on Facebook click bait and intended for third graders.

Don't even get me started on the ending. Picoult completely undermines the purpose and reality of marriage and in some cases the faith that backs these up. The characters don't even attempt to fight for their relationships to an insulting extent. I felt virtually nauseous reading what was no doubt intended to be a happy ending because of how poorly Libby and Max's storylines were handled. All of this is topped off by the fact that the characters can't go two sentences without a metaphore or analogy. It reads very fake.

I usually enjoy Jodi Picoult's work and I loved the premise of this one, but the book was so much worse than I expected. Save yourself the trouble.

Such mixed feelings... I was completely and totally captivated by Minka's portion of the book. It felt so real and pulled me in for hours. It seemed accurate to what I've heard about holocaust victims and hit all the emotional points so well. I found myself thinking about the victims and the circumstances surrounding the war for days. Sage and Leo's relationship is adorable as well; he's just a well written character in general. Mary also brought a ray of light into the book with her lessons, kindness, and quirkyness.

On the other hand, the way Sage acts at the end, going through with the killing and lying to her new boyfriend to boot, it feels like she hadn't learned anything at all. I felt so disgusted with her after that and I'd loved her character until the last chapter. It felt like, until then, she was being portrayed as a girl with a good heart who had made some self-destructive decisions because of pain and guilt, and the ending flipped that one it's head. I'm not totally sure what message Jodi Picoult is trying to leave us with, unless it's that Sage made all the wrong decisions and refused to learn any lessons. Whenever she talked to Leo she seemed like the more forgiving one of the two, but in the end she makes revenge based decisions and doesn't even do for anyone what an SS Soldier of all people (Franz) did. Tell the truth about what she'd done. It was really dissapointing. Maybe Jodi Picoult was making a point by ending with Joseph/Franz turning out to be the basically "good" guy and Sage turning out to be the basically "bad" guy despite the appearances of the rest of the book. A pointed message about the grey nature of humanity and the complexity of good and evil? Maybe. But it still felt strange and disappointing.

So overall... I have really really strong feelings in both directions