Where There's Smoke by Jodi Picoult

When I saw that there was a new Jodi Picoult book out, I had to pick it up to read. Even better, it was free to download from Barnes & Noble onto my nook. The only downside is that it was a short story meant to introduce readers to the main character of her soon-to-be released book. Despite this, I wanted to give Where There’s Smoke a try.

The story starts out with a little background on the main character, Serenity, and how she found out that she is a psychic. Flash forward to the future, and she’s a celebrity with her own television show, on which she does psychic readings for guests. Her guest for this show is Betsy, a recently widowed young woman whose military husband was killed during his tour in Iraq. While Betsy had been told that Jason, her husband, had been killed protecting the rest of his platoon, Serenity finds out that this was not the case at all. Jason shows her that he was killed by friendly fire that came from the captain of his platoon. When Betsy does not believe this, Jason sets the studio lights on fire in retaliation. That’s where the show ends, but that isn’t the end of Jason. He keeps haunting Serenity, setting things around her on fire in his anger.

Because of the fire in the studio, Serenity’s producer is mad at her. They then see a politician and his wife on television talking about how their son was kidnapped a week ago and the police have yet to find out anything. Serenity decides that she is going to find the politician’s son, and record the whole process live. She finds the son shut up in a locker at the train station, and unfortunately he is dead. When she gets home, Serenity’s house is surrounded by firefighters, who have just put out another fire caused by Jason. The captain of the fire squad happens to have the same name as the captain who killed Jason, and Serenity takes this as a sign that Jason might leave her alone now. That’s where the story ends.

Where There’s Smoke tackled a controversial topic, as per Picoult’s usual style. She touched on psychics and child kidnapping, but the main focus (to me at least) was that Jason was killed by friendly fire and the military covered it up to protect the honor of the captain. Every book that Picoult has written deals with some type of controversial topic, and this was no exception. She made you feel bad for both Betsy and Serenity, which was a great way to introduce the main character of her next novel. Picoult also handled and entire criminal case from start to finish in less than 30 pages, which was a pretty amazing feat.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It made me want to read the novel is prefaces so that I can learn more about Serenity and how she deals with being a psychic. I would recommend Where There’s Smoke to anyone who loves Picoult’s work, or is just looking for a quick but excellent read.


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