Welcome to another post for the ‘National Health Blog Post Month’!!  Today’s prompt asks us to write a book report and then how we can tie the book to our health or our life in general.

For anyone, who knows me, know only too well, I am a complete bookworm!!  I could happily spend hours and hours browsing the shelves of the local library or the book stores.   Books have that magical power to take us to different places, or during different times.  They can teach us about a whole range of topics; or get us discussing thought-provoking topical issues.  One of my favourite authors is Jodi Picoult; the author of around 19 books all of which are thought-provoking dramas examining topical issues, especially those with a moral or ethical dilemma attached to them.  What I love about these books is that they really make you think of not only the issue being examined, but also your own views of the subject, questioning even your own views – sometimes you may finish the book with a total different outlook than when you started!

And one of my favourite books of hers is the one that actually started my love of her writing; which is ‘The Pact’.

‘The Pact’ is a story of love and friendship; and examines whether parents can ever really know their children.  The book centres around the Hartes and Golds; neighbours for over eighteen years; in that time they have shared everything from a weekly get together over a Chinese to practically raising their children together.

After all the years of being the best of friends, then it comes to no surprise that two of their children; Chris and Emily also become great friends; that friendship eventually developing into love.  One night however, both families receive the same terrifying phone call – that both Chris and Emily have been involved in a shooting.  A shooting that claims the life of Emily due to a gunshot wound to the head, and Chris is also rushed to the hospital after a fall off a carousel.  The police find an unspent bullet in the gun that  belonged to Chris’s father – a bullet which Chris claims was intended for himself.  A suicide pact.

However, the police detective that is in charge of the investigation has doubts over the supposed suicide pact – instead believing that Chris murdered Emily after certain secrets cones to light…

And so Chris finds himself charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Emily and a courtroom drama ensues…

At the time I started reading this book, I was going through depression – I had no friends, no real life – if I wasn’t in school then I was stuck in the house with my parents; isolated and lonely, even when surrounded by other people.  Then there was the dizziness; at the time the dizziness began becoming worse; so bad in fact, that I was unable to go out without someone else with me; scared that I will fall. Endless trips to the doctors, and hospital appointments could not determine the cause, and so was again, told that the dizziness was essentially “all in my head.”

As you can imagine, this was not a happy time for me at all, and there were many times that I thought about ending my own life – I felt that everyone hated me, saw me a freak and felt that I was a burden on my parents and family.  This book changed all that however, like Emily Gold, I was an only child, and the reading the effects of her suicide on her parents in the book, made me think about my own parents and the effects that it would have on them if I did take my own life.  Reading about the devastating impact suicide can have on a family; the grief of losing an only child was heart-breaking to read, and made me think twice about doing so, as even if I died, there would be many people left who would have to deal with the consequences.

So, this boom, not only being a truly fantastic read, but it also kind of saved my life….