It almost frightens me to realize how little sympathy I have for someone who (it is later revealed) has a somewhat plausible explanation for her dark thoughts. Yet, isn't this what therapy is for? Clearly, neither she, nor her doting parents or their enmeshed best friends' parents had an ounce of sense to recommend assistance that was not only available, but calling out from the core of their middle class existence! I've tried setting him up on dates, I've tried suggesting him to meet new people, but I think after Mom, he finds it hard to trust. I mean they were together for 10 years before she left. That's a long time to spend with one person, for them to just walk out with no explanation. WARNING. SPOILERS AHEAD. (Not that I even recommend you read this novel. So just read the spoilers.)

Abigail – I’m approaching my twenty-fifth birthday, and I can’t seem to get a guy to even show up for our first date, let alone find some kind of romantic relationship. Thank God for Cyrus. He’s my very best friend and I don’t know what I would do without him. He may be the only dependable, honest, sweet man left on the planet. Details About The Pact I am a bit disappointed. I was so close to loving this novel and its author, and I really did want to love them, but the denouement really let me down.Although puffy, or baggy clothes isn't my style I also don't want to be freezing if it happens to be colder than expected. This book had a strong impact on me. I loved the ending, I loved the trial and I felt it had a lot of passion in general. This is the best of Picoult's that I have read.*

Throughout the entire second half of the novel, when Emily's slow ascent downward is being explained, I wanted to shake Chris until his teeth rattled. If my boyfriend came to me and said, "I want to kill myself. I'm extremely unhappy because of something but I refuse to tell you why", I would immediately seek therapy for him in ANY WAY POSSIBLE. However, Chris being a naive teenager (what other reason could there be???), does nothing, convincing himself that he can stop Emily before she takes the final step. To say there had been a loss was ludicrous; one lost a shoe or a set of keys. You did not suffer the death of a child and say there was a loss. There was a catastrophe. A devestation. A hell." I dont fully understand how he could have gone through with helping her commit suicide, and not tell someone...either her parents or his? I wonder if he did, if things would have ended up okay, or if she would have went ahead and done it alone? Chris...about two thirds thru the book is when I started feeling bad for him....his emotions, life, everything, was being played and toyed with by Emily. In the present, the Golds are devastated by Emily's death, bewildered by the notion that she was suicidal and they had no inkling.

The Pact Summary

I was rather disappointed with this novel because I had been told it was one of the better Jodi Picoult books but it was all very blah and meh throughout the whole thing and many parts left me in a fiery rage and wanting to cut this book up into a million little pieces and then throw it out the window in celebration.

The basic plot of this book was two children, Chris Harte and Emily Gold, growing up together as neighbors and best friends. They were inseparable and starting dating around the age of 15 and 14, respectively. By the age of 17, Emily was dead and Chris was on trial for her murder due to an apparent suicide pact gone awry. The trial that takes up at least half the book and then there's a predictable ending. The only true thing that kept me interested in this book was the fact that every other chapter told an account of the past, explaining the circumstances that lead us to this suicide pact (I was curious!). During your commute: If you take public transportation or have a long commute, you may find it helpful to use that time to read. In the fall of 1979, the Golds, consisting of a recently pregnant Melanie Gold, and her husband Michael Gold, moved into the small town of Bainbridge, New Hampshire. They moved in next door to the Hartes, another coincidentally pregnant couple, and through their shared interests, the women, Gus Harte and Melanie Gold, began to forge a lasting friendship. Their husbands, James Harte and Michael Gold would follow suit and the families would soon raise their firstborns together.To sum up, I wanted to tell the main character's girlfriend (I've forgotten all of their names, mercifully), to "get over yourself!!" I'm not giving anything away when I reveal that the "pact" of the title involves her asking her boyfriend to help her commit suicide. Of course, a dramatic trial ensues. What moron couldn't have predicted that--which is another reason why I loathe this person for placing her boyfriend in unnecessary legal trouble of the Shawshank Redemption kind. The Pact starts off with a boy and a girl, who are later identified as Chris and Emily, talking. The boy and girl tell each other “I Love You” and then there is a shot fired. After that the reader is taken to two sets of parents, Chris and Emily’s. They are sharing dinner at a Chinese restaurant like usual. We find out that they are neighbors and have been since before Chris and Emily were born. Of course, Chris and Emily, aged 18 in the present time, were attached at the hip since day 1 and are destined to be together and there is a big sense of attachment between these characters. But after they finish dinner and arrive home they receive phone calls that they need to go to the hospital. Emily is dead and Chris is injured. Chris says it was a suicide pact but police suspect otherwise because they think Chris pulled the trigger. After some tearful exchanges, the whirlwind ~adventure~ starts in The Pact. Did Chris kill her or was it really a suicide pact??? It was finally Friday. I was on my way home from school, I hated that kip, but I know that if I want to have a place to live I have to continue going there. Dad has told me, if I dropout, I may as well move out. That wouldn't be too bad, although I know I can't afford my own place. Besides deep down, I couldn't see myself leaving him. We're all each other have. No, all the stories in this novel are fictional. Are they making a movie on The Pact by Dakota Rebel?

This book was a complete and utter mess. After this review I’m going to push this story from my mind and pretend that I never read it at all. I don’t think there is a single good thing I said about this book. I guess I semi-liked Chris’s sister Kate but she wasn’t in it enough for me feel attached to her. Everything else besides Kate was a pile of crap. Having said that the story itself was not really top billing in the novel, I have to give Picoult full credit for her marvelous portrayal of some absolutely electric courtroom scenes and Chris Harte's trial for capital murder. The description of his time spent in prison and the relationship that he develops with his cell-mate is absolutely heartbreaking and certainly qualifies as first-rate storytelling. On the other hand, my impression of THE PACT overall is that it is considerably weaker than some of Picoult's other efforts such as MY SISTER'S KEEPER or NINETEEN MINUTES. Some rather lame dialogue, an overly lengthy exposition in the central part of the novel and my personal difficulty in believing that Chris Harte would have chosen to deal with the issue entirely on his own detract from the overall effect of the novel. Cyrus – Abigail and I have been best friends since high school, and I’ve been in love with her since the moment I first saw her. We made a pact that we would marry each other if we were still single by time we were twenty-five. And I’ve been doing my best to ensure that’s exactly what happens.I also thought the book was about twice as long as it needed to be. It seemed to go on and on and I got impatient reading it.