Warning Warning Warning!
RANT AHEAD
Coherency is not to be expected. Spoilers are.
Also, "Mercy" is a novel that contains ADULT CONTENT AND SITUATIONS. While it's not really graphic in the novel and I don't explicitly detail it in the least, I don't recommend it for younger readers.
Well, I don't recommend the book for anybody, really.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a bookworm. (Read: nerd.) I get very passionate about the novels I read and if I don't like one, you'll be sure to hear about it and exactly why I dislike it.
That being said, many people who've taken the time to talk about literature with me know that I'm a Jodi Picoult fan. I love a majority of her books; she has a way of making characters so understandable and plot twists so unexpected that you can't help but read and reread and read a third time, simply because you can't help yourself.
That was, however, not the case for "Mercy."
- Quote :
- What would you do for someone you love? Would you lie? Would you leave? Would you kill? These are just some of the questions confronting the characters in Mercy, which follows the path of two cousins driven to extremes by the power of love.
Cameron MacDonald has spent his life guided by duty. As the police chief of a small Massachusetts town that has been home to generations of his Scottish clan, he is bound to the town's residents by blood and honor. Yet when his cousin Jamie arrives at the police station with the body of his wife and the bald confession that he's killed her, Cam immediately places him under arrest.
The situation isn't as clear to Cam's wife, Allie. While she is devoted to her husband, she finds herself siding against Cam, seduced by the picture James paints of a man so in love with a woman that he'd grant all her wishes… even the one that meant taking her life.
Into this charged atmosphere drifts Mia, a new assistant at Allie's floral shop, for whom Cam feels an instant and inexplicable attraction. While he aids the prosecution in preparing the case against Jamie, who killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy, Cam finds himself betraying his own wife.
Woven tight with passion and a fast-paced plot, Mercy explores some of today's most highly charged emotional and ethical issues as it draws toward its stunning conclusion. When you love someone, where do you cross the line of moral obligation? And how can you commonly define love and devotion to begin with? Long after you have turned the last page, you'll still be thinking about this rich novel, as well as questioning your own beliefs about love and loyalty.
Allie is introduced right off the bat as a doormat. She lavishes love and attention onto her husband, the police chief and also the head of the clan, who is honestly the most selfish and utterly crass, infuriating character I have ever had the misfortune to burn into my mind. He walks all over Allie, and is quite frankly a terrible person right from the start.
A girl named Mia comes to town and quickly secures a job and a friendship with Allie. Cameron visits the flower shop where the girls work one day and is immediately - IMMEDIATELY - attracted to Mia because of the color of her eyes. Whatever.
While they're all happy-sappy-doo in the flower shop, a guy who doesn't live in that town pulls up in the square with his dead wife in the car and announces that A) His wife is dead, and he killed her, and B) He's the police chief's cousin. Chaos ensues.
While Cameron is busy being "ROAR, I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE FAMILY, YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!" Allie is "Oh, Mia, you don't have a place to stay tonight? Oh, that's okay, you can come stay with me! Even though I haven't even known you a day, and you have a cat that will quite possibly kill me in my sleep, and you have just a bad aura about you, you are allowed in my home anytime!"
So she does.
It's revealed that Jamie did, indeed, kill his wife. But because she asked him to. She had advanced cancer, and was sick and miserable all the time. He killed her only because she asked him to; he was entirely in love with her otherwise. Allie is entranced by this; because her husband doesn't give two kicks about her, she's in love with the idea of THAT AMOUNT of love: a husband doing whatever his wife asked of him, including killing her. So she decides to help with his case, traveling around and talking to relatives of his and everything.
While she does, her husband starts an affair with Mia. Which was totally expected right off the bat, even though he's known her all of three days. He doesn't care about his wife's feelings at all; he only wants what he wants when he wants it. Mia is also an utterly despicable character who voices her constant thoughts of being totally in love with Cam, regardless that he's married to Allie. In fact, she says she's "happy to replace her."
This affair continues for a painstaking amount of time. Really, it drags. And with each turn of the page, I hated Cam and Mia that much more. You would think that most of the novel would be about Jamie's trial and his situation, but it's not. It is ALL ABOUT CAM'S AFFAIR. It made me sick. And the book draaaaaggeeddd on with repeated scenes, all dull and tedious to read.
His mother discovered Cam's affair first and expressed her disappointment in him but doesn't do squat about it. In fact, Cam is irritated with HER for discovering them!
Eventually, Allie finds out about her husband's affair, once Mia ditches town for whatever reason. She punishes Cam, but she TAKES HIM BACK.
Jamie's trial was really the thing that was the least important, though the premise of the novel was euthanasia and the boundaries of love. It was poorly demonstrated and took second stage to Cameron's nasty business of destroying his wife. Eventually, he was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Yay.
There are several small, unimportant subplots throughout the novel that, if they had been fleshed out, really could've been interesting. There's hints of supernatural, and things like that. However, they all fell flat, including the entire "As the police chief of a small Massachusetts town that has been home to generations of his Scottish clan, he is bound to the town's residents by blood and honor" aspect. The Scottish clan supposedly relocated from Scotland when the Americas were first discovered or something, and became Americanized over the years for the most part. I don't know. It was really hard to follow.
I might've liked it better if:
Allie had more of a backbone.
Mia came back to town, but Cam "chose" Allie instead. And then Allie refuses him and finds someone that deserves HER instead of the other way around.
The plot wasn't so BORING.
The scenes weren't so repetitive. Honestly, half of the book could've been left out and nothing would have been missing.
I haven't thrown a book at the wall in....well, never. I threw this one. I haven't hated characters so passionately in...well, never. (I don't count "Twilight" because I don't consider "Twilight" literature.)
RAGE.RAGE.RAGE.
Okay. *deep breath* I think that about covers it. Sorry if it got confusing. xD I just read this today and my thoughts are a little scattered.
Seriously, though, don't read it. HUGE waste of time.
