Vanishing Acts - Jodi Picoult.

SPOILERS BELOW

I've been on a bit of a Jodi Picoult run lately, I've read five of her books, four that i loved, one that i hated and am trying to forget, this is number six and it didn't disappoint (although it did have its issues for me) but it almost didn't amaze. 

Delia Hopkins is the protagonist and she has quite a nice life, a young daughter, a fiancee shes known since she was a child, she works as a search and rescue team with her awesome dog Greta. Her Dad lives with her and hes basically an angel. All in all, you feel quite jealous of her.

We get a brief glimpse of a memory that she can't quite place before the bombshell is dropped that her father kidnapped her as a child from her mother and she isn't the person she thinks she is. I wished there had been a little more leading to this revelation. Although that rarely happens with Picoult, this book definitely needed it

After heading down to Arizona. Delia pushes her qualified but not brilliant fiancee Nick to be her fathers attorney but remains torn on how she feels about what her father did for most of the book. Jumping between forgiveness and understanding and anger, further confused when she meets her mother. Her best friend Fritz (who also happens to be Nicks best friend) comes along for the ride, originally to write a piece for the local paper but his love for Delia makes him scrap that along the way and irritatingly his job too.

I love Jodi's style, investigation then trial and it has kept me gripped with every book of hers i have read so far, this one was exactly the same. Delia is a fairly likable character until the end, when she dumps her fiancee who has just managed to win her fathers case for their mutual best friend because he had a slip up and drank, hes a reformed alcoholic. That element found uncomfortable and quite angry with Delia. The whole book had made it clear the Delia loved her fiancee and that their best friend Fritz was only a friend to her (despite one previous digression, a kiss when they were kids) and yet by the end of the book its him she is sailing off into the sunset with, leaving Nick behind. 

I love the folklore in the novel and was sad when Ruthann ended her own life. I do wish that the abuse should have been explored further, I wanted an unpleasant ending for Victor.

Its a three star book for me, I loved so many elements of it but some of her other novels i find are superior to this one. Although the ending, where we discover why Delia's father took her  from her mother, is probably one of the best endings to her novels she has written;

"Because you asked me"