This is her newest one. My main beef with Picoult is that she can be too melodramatic. It's not always, but it seems when she goes for the melodrama, she goes full force for it. This one is a melodrama. And there's too much going on in this book. There are the following first person POVs in the book:
Sage: I cannot figure out how old she is. She's a baker, who is harboring some sort of guilt over the scar on her face and her mother's death. Is a loner, having affair with married man. Jewish by heritage, not religious. She is annoying and after awhile you just want to shake her really hard and tell her to get therapy or meds or both and grow up.
Josef: 95 year old man Sage meets in grief support group. They become friends, he confesses that he is a Nazi. Wants Sage to kill him after forgiving his sins. He tells his story of being a Nazi as a young man. All old man story is told through Sage's POV.
Leo: Nazi hunter of sorts Sage contacts after Josef confesses to her. Yes, they become involved. I know a lot about his mother which doesn't further the story at all.
Minka: Sage's grandmother who is a Holocaust survivor. This POV is told from when Minka was a young woman, living through the Holocaust. All old woman Minka is told through Sage/Leo POV.
Made up story of Aleks and Arian: Story that young Minka is writing when she is caught up in the Holocaust. Also happens to save her life b/c the story gets an upper level German officer interested in her.
The way you keep of the POVs straight is through different fonts of text.
She didn't do a bad job and it's not nearly as trite as laying it out flat like this is. Sage and Leo are boring, one-dimensional and stupid. Minka, Josef and the fictional story is actually quite interesting and mostly good. But it's high melodrama and the ending is just too much. I think she was trying to be handle delicate subject matter delicately and honestly, but it ends up being ham handed. It's only 400 pages, so all of these POVs are just too much.
2/5 stars, won't read again.