“The Pact” by Jodi Picoult is my favorite book, by far.

I wouldn’t consider Picoult one of my favorite authors, but this specific book of hers is captivating. I have read many books for leisure, but I have read this book four times and every time I read it, I just can’t put it down. “The Pact” is a fictional love story with a twist. I love this book because it is so different from any other love story that I have ever read.

A synopsis taken from “The Pact’s” website states that, “For 18 years, the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duty– they’ve grown so close that it seems they have always been a part of each other’s lives. Parents and children alike have been best friends, so it’s no surprise that during high school, Chris and Emily’s friendship blossoms into something more. They’ve been soulmates since they were born.”

The book goes back and forth between “then” and “now.” The “then” aspect of the story is a love story in which hidden secrets that Emily kept from Chris and her parents have surfaced and the “now” is nowhere near a love story.

The book is titled “The Pact” because Emily and Chris make a suicide pact, but Chris wasn’t ever into it from the get-go. Chris later goes along with Emily’s idea of the suicide pact, only to stop her last minute before following through with it.

They go to Emily’s favorite spot, a carousel, to follow through with their pact but before Chris gets the chance to stop her, he realizes how much pain she is in and feels terrible that the person that he loves more than anyone is in so much pain and doesn’t want to be alive anymore.

They have become so close, as lifelong neighbors and friends, that when Emily is in pain, Chris feels it too. With Emily holding the gun up to her head, with Chris’s finger on the trigger and her finger on his, she shoots herself. Since Chris is one who passes out at the sight of blood, he passes out when he see’s her bleeding and therefore doesn’t follow through on his end. When the cops find Emily dead and Chris unconscious, Chris is charged with murder. With Chris’s fingerprints on the trigger as well as the surfacing of one of Emily’s secrets, he has much evidence against him.

“The Pact” goes back and forth between Emily and Chris’s beautiful yet confusing love story, Emily’s depression, their parents’ relationships, their relationship with their parents, and Chris’s trial in court. The reader discovers what lent to Emily’s depression as well as many secrets that she kept from Chris.

This book is so unpredictable, which is something so rare in love stories, it seems. Even though it seems that I have told you the entire story, there is so much more to it. “The Pact” is a book so full of substance and is simply an amazing read.

“… an affecting story of obsession, loss, and some of the more wrenching varieties of guilt. A moving story, mingling elements of mystery with sensitive exploration of a tragic subject.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Picoult is a writer of high energy and conviction who has, in her fifth novel, brought to life a cast of subtly drawn characters caught up in a tragedy as timeless and resonant as those of the Greeks or Shakespeare… this psychologically shrewd tale is as suspenseful as any best-selling legal thrilled… she forges a finely honed, commanding, and cathartic drama.”

—Booklist