REVIEW:

If books were retail establishments, Wish You Were Here would be The COVID Store. Not a Walmart or Tesco, where you can grab a quart of COVID while you’re there to stock up on a cart-full of subjects. Nope, this is all COVID/all the time.

While many recent contemporary novels have included the new pandemic world to varying degrees of specificity, none to my knowledge have immersed readers quite so completely into one character’s experience dealing with its ramifications. The book begins just as the first wave is hitting New York hospitals. Diana, a 29-year-old art historian, must decide if she should go on vacation to the Galápagos without her boyfriend, Finn, a doctor who needs to stay put and help manage the crisis on the front lines.

She goes, and she ends up getting stuck there. Of course there are worse places to ride out COVID. The scenery is lush and inspirational, the people are captivating, and the overall experience is perspective-shifting. While Diana is meeting new friends and finding her true self, Finn is back home risking his life every day as a first responder.

And I hated her for it. I contemplated throwing this novel across the room many times. “If I even finish it, this is a 2-star read at best,” I thought.

But then…

I’ve got to hand it to Jodi Picoult, I don’t think I can name another book that gave me whiplash quite like Wish You Were Here did. She sure got me!

By the end, I was captivated. Diana had dug herself a pretty deep hole in my eyes, but I opened up to the possibility of her redemption. It’s so rare for me to allow a second half of a novel to make up for the first that I have to give Picoult credit.

Reading through other reviews, Wish You Were Here is clearly a polarizing reading experience. It’s just not a “meh” type of book. Prepare for impact if you do pick it up, though what impact it will have on you personally is hard to say. Recommend it for your book club and get ready to watch the sparks fly! People gonna have opinions on this one.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a deeply moving novel about the resilience of the human spirit in a moment of crisis.

Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos—days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time.

But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes.

Almost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry. The whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen. Completely isolated, she must venture beyond her comfort zone. Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father’s suspicion of outsiders.

Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself—and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different.