"The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center—a women’s reproductive health services clinic—its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.

After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.

But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters: A nurse who calms her own panic in order save the life of a wounded woman. A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before. A pro-life protester disguised as a patient, who now stands in the cross hairs of the same rage she herself has felt. A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy. And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard."

Acquired via PaperBackSwap. (Unabridged on 12 CDs; read by Bahni Turpin)

At a women's clinic in Mississippi, a sight where among other things, abortions are performed, the morning hours are disrupted when a shooter enters and takes out his aggression and frustration on the staff and patients who are in the building. Among those in the clinic are the sister and daughter of the policeman who is assigned to negotiate with the shooter from the outside.

In typical Jodi Picoult style, this novel centers on a controversial topic (abortion), and frankly, I'm surprised she hadn't chosen to tackle this topic sooner. The main reason I continue to read her novels is that I enjoy the way she confronts difficult subject matter such as this. However, this book was just a miss for me. As with all/most of her books, the story is told through a variety of character voices. This one, however, is told in a reverse timeline, starting at the end of the day and progressing by gradually jumping back one hour in time until we reach the beginning of the story. I've read books like this before and appreciated the backwards timeline, but in this case, I really don't see the purpose or how it added to the story. It made it more confusing than anything, and I think this was compounded on audio, where the transitions between chapters (hours) tended to run together, and if you weren't paying full attention, you miss the transition altogether and don't realize you've jumped back another hour. Bahni Turpin narrated this audiobook, and normally she's an excellent reader, but I didn't find her reading remarkable in this one. There is a small twist at the end of the book which I wasn't expecting (Picoult's good at that), but my overall impression of this book was a feeling of underwhelm. I didn't particularly connect with any of the characters and the story itself just felt flat. Though there were some good points brought up in this novel, I'd say this is one of my least favorites of Picoult's books.

Sending off to PBS member. Enjoy! :')

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