First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

After Zoe Baxter loses her baby, the only way she can find of coping is to try again. But her husband Max disagrees – more than that, he wants a divorce. When they separate, there is no mention of the unborn children they created together, still waiting at the clinic.

Then Zoe falls in love again, out of the blue, and finds herself with an unexpected second chance to have a family.

But Max has found a new life too – one with no place in it for people like Zoe. And he will stand up in court to say that her new choice of partner makes her an unfit mother.

Jodi Picoult’s most powerful novel yet asks who has the right to decide what makes the ideal family?

Happy Friday everyone! That is another work week in the book! Thankfully, this workweek was condensed here in the Philippines. April 9 and 10 were both national holidays. It somehow provided us with two extra rest days. Before we know it, it is again the weekend! So how has your work week been? Mine obviously was not as hectic as the previous week, thankfully. How about you? How was your week? I hope that you were able to accomplish all your goals this week and that you are ending the week on a high note. I hope the work went well and that we are all diving into the weekend carefree. If it went the other way, I hope that the weekend will provide you a badly needed respite. I hope that we all spend it pursuing the things we are passionate about.

But before I can dive into the weekend, let me cap this work-cum-blogging with a new First Impression Friday update. For April, I have decided to extend my foray into the works of women writers, a journey I started back in March in commemoration of Women’s History Month. Toward the end of March, however, I realized that I still had scores of books written by female writers I wanted to read, prompting me to extend this literary journey to April, hoping that I get to read more amazing works. Besides, my March literary journey was filled with memorable and exciting reads that took me to various parts of the world. For this First Impression Friday update, I am featuring Jodi Picoult’s Sing You Home.

It has been nearly a decade since I read a novel by the prolific American writer; I believe the last Picoult novel I read if my memory serves me right, is My Sister’s Keeper. I guess this is the main reason why I decided to pick up Sing You Home even though I wasn’t initially planning on reading it this month. At the heart of the novel was Zoe Baxter, a music therapist in her late thirties (almost forty). She was married to Max. Unfortunately, they were not blessed with any children although they have been trying since they got married a decade ago. However, it was to no avail. Max, apparently, had infertility issues while Zoe was suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome. Zoe’s condition resulted in two miscarriages. As a last-ditch effort to have children – Zoe badly wanted to have her child – the couple resorted to in vitro fertilization.

After how many tries, it seems that the couple will finally be able to conceive a child. However, a couple of weeks before the baby was due, tragedy struck yet again, leaving Zoe devastated. However, she had not lost hope and wanted to try again; the couple still had three frozen embryos. Max, however, loses it. He was on the brink of personal collapse. He felt that the baby had taken precedence over their lives and that Zoe had forgotten about her marital duties. Max promptly filed for divorce. So far, the premise seems very straightforward. But Picoult’s works are rarely straightforward. The divorce drastically changed the couple. Max has fallen into his old habits only to be saved by the Evangelical Church. It was in the Church that he found his salvation. Zoe, on the other hand, was learning more about her sexual identity.

All the while, Picoult was laying out the groundwork for what one could expect would be another dramatic encounter between the former couple. A legal battle is brewing as various factors converge. However, one seminal subject raised was when a fetus, in this case, an embryo is considered a human being. Conservatives saw it as a human being already. In the context of current American political discourse, this has become an extensively discussed subject, in light of the recent overturning of the Roe vs Wade decision. Interestingly, this landmark 1973 decision by the US Supreme Court was referred to in the novel although the novel was published way back in 2011.

So far, these are elements I expected from a Picoult novel: a dysfunctional family on the brink of collapse, a legal case, family dynamics, and, of course, politics. Politics, I have learned, is a staple subject in novels written by American writers. The writing is also rather very straightforward and rarely meanders although backstories of the characters make the readers understand their motivations. I am looking forward to how Picoult ties it all up and from the Picoult novels I have read so far, I have reasons to believe that the conclusion will both be cathartic and positive, at least, I hope so in this case. How about you fellow reader? What book or books are you going to take with you this weekend? I hope you get to enjoy whatever you are reading right now. Happy weekend!