It all started with a dream. Jenny Boylan, had a wild dream that she had co-authored a book with Jodi Picoult and tweeted about it. That led to a DM and here we are… with Mad Honey. After reading this one, I’m certainly glad that dreams do come true.

Olivia McAfee and her son Asher move from Boston to Olivia’s hometown in New Hampshire to get a fresh start after her marriage ends. It’s a small town and she takes over her father’s beekeeping business. Nine years later Ava Campanello and her daughter Lily move from California to the same small town to start over after her divorce and some additional trauma. Asher and Lily meet and instantly connect. Four months later, Lily is dead. Asher is found with her body and is accused of murder.

Boylan and Picoult alternate authoring the story in differing timelines, Lily’s starting at her death and working backwards and Olivia’s starting at Lily’s death and going forward. Of course, this being a Picoult novel there is a HUGE twist and you come away with tons of knowledge (you’ll never look at bees the same way).

This is the first Picoult novel is quite a bit that I’ve enjoyed. Seems that Boylan is her lucky charm. I’ve admired Jenny Boylan for quite some time for her advocacy work, but hadn’t had a chance to read anything by her, that will change. They worked seamlessly together and although they alternated characters you could not tell between the two. They developed rich characters and even though the chapters were longer than the typical book these days (most coming in at around 30 minutes or so as per kindle) I often found myself looking down to see if I could *maybe* squeeze in just one more. You have to appreciate that in a book.

I had to give a teensy deduction because Olivia is in court every day to support Asher BUT she is a witness. I understand why this was done since we only have two narrators but it was just so glaringly wrong. I still give the book a 4.75 (rounded up)