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Friendship Friday is a bloghop for books bloggers hosted by Create With Joy. Every which she asks one question and bloggers answer.

The question  for the week is: What do you enjoy about blogging?

Well, here at my books blog (thriftymommasbrainfood) I enjoy the great reads I get each week, sometimes each day, and I love that I get to interview authors occasionally and chat about writing too. I like being able to incorporate my family in the process and at times we review children’s books together. I love that this not only shows the children how much I love reading, but teaches them their opinions are valued too. I like that they enjoy getting new books and then vlogging with me from our treehouse. Sometimes the children’s insights are brilliant and honest. They are always real. My main blog – thriftymommastips – is a bit faster paced. I review brands and write about parenting and cooking and events and special needs and I am always on a deadline there. Here, in my little corner of the world, I curl up and enjoy a good read. Imagine myself on a beach, or in a window seat with a tea or latte relaxing. That’s what a good read is all about for me.

Now follow the button above and find some new friends.

Any new novel by New York Times Best-selling author Jodi Picoult is a cause to celebrate. My loyal readers and subscribers to thriftymommastips and thriftymommasbrainfood know how much I love this author. I have read almost every book she has written, in fact I am pretty sure I have read the entire Jodi Picoult oeuvre. So when I finished her last book Sing You Home, I asked my friend Wanda @YMCBookalicious who has interviewed the author, what was next. I was both shocked and intrigued by the idea of this one and the setting. Wolves and end of life themes? The potential was intriguing. Now maybe I am spoiled by Picoult’s many magnificent books like House Rules, My Sister’s Keeper, Faith and Mercy and all those gorgeous novels. I am often spellbound by her plots and head over heels for the characters that spring from her imagination, which is maybe why I find it so hard to say that I sadly found Lone Wolf underwhelming. My love for Jodi Picoult’s novels is well established. I have reviewed many of her other books. I have loved many, and wished I had written many, and truly admired her skill and penchant for research. And yet Lone Wolf, her latest, was merely Meh for me.

Lone Wolf is the story of Luke Warren and his pack. When he is critically injured in a car accident at the start of the book, Warren’s family struggles to pull him back or let him go. This is an end of life saga that explores when life begins and ends and brain trauma and family relationships. Not surprisingly conflict comes in children at odds with each other. One refuses to let father die and the other fights vehemently to not extend the life support systems. I felt there was so much more potential for the sibling relationship here to be relevant and contemporary and perhaps even emotional and real. And yet it stays on the page. Flat. How I love the metaphor at work here. It is smart and well used. The family as a pack metaphor comes full circle towards the end and as a reader I enjoyed that. As a writer I appreciate this stylistically. Warren, the lone wolf, is a world renowned wildlife biologist who loses himself in his work and immerses himself into a wolf pack, accepted as one of their own. He eats when they eat, dines on raw calf, until he gets too sick from doing so, and sleeps outdoors with them. In the wild as part of a wolf pack he finds his senses heightened – this is a sub-theme carried over from House Rules, where our main character had Asperger’s syndrome and clear sensory processing disorder as well. Warren is larger than life, appearing on TV and magazine covers after he emerges from his experiment. We learn that he has written a book and his wife is remarried and at least one of his children is alienated from him. His young teenage daughter Cara is however fiercely devoted, having chosen to live with her father and not her remarried mother.

The research here, is as usual, amazing. I learned more about wolves than I ever could from reading a non fiction book about the same topic. So what  doesn’t work for me? Well the family dynamic is great and I love that the characters are all constantly changing in ways we cannot quite get a grip on until nearly the end of the story. I love the comparisons to the alpha male and female wolves. The problem with this one for me is that the emotional investment is weak. I expect to love at least one of Picoult’s characters and relate to one. I expect to have the carpet yanked out from under my feet near the end. It is a Picoult device. But not here. No compelling twist at end. No heartbreaking characters. Luke, in all of his mythical stature, is never really likable. I get that his character lingers between life and death and his viewpoint is established in a sort of series of flashbacks, interspersed between other character’s viewpoints. But because he is never really likable, he is merely a device to forward the story in some ways. I expected deeper character development of Luke. And I expect deeper characters from Picoult.

There were many moments in this book where I sighed as I felt I had read it before. Especially when Cara bolted from her hospital bed and went straight to a lawyer’s office. Too many similarities with My Sister’s Keeper and every other Picoult novel in which a trial is featured. Even when Picoult is not at the top of her game, she is still worth reading. But frankly as a fan of her body of work I would very much recommend starting with a different one of her novels.

Lone Wolf, by Jodi Picoult, Simon and Schuster Canada, $32, 421 pages

By now Jodi’s fans know of her penchant for ripping headline making sagas and plots and twisting them into best-sellers. They all know too of her reliance on courtroom drama. Perhaps its time to change the formula, because this one, although well researched, fell flat and predictable.

 This one gets a $$$ 1/2 out of $$$$$.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for free. My opinion is all my own.

Sometimes we get the cutest books here. I love that part of my job. Noni is a sweet little girl, who is also a bit of a doormat. She can do all kinds of cool things like reciting the alphabet backwards, but Noni cannot say No! She has a friend who totally takes advantage of her and can’t stop herself. When Noni wants to tell her No, please don’t sleep over at my house tonight; instead she says, Yes. If Noni wishes to play a different game, she can’t assert herself. Instead she plays the dog and is directed through the motions of playing a game she’d rather not. And Noni’s friend Susie just keeps pushing the limits of friendship. One day she even cuts all of Noni’s hair and Noni still can’t say No. So how long will Noni be untrue to herself? How will she react? What will she do? Will an adult have to step in or will she solve the problem herself? Read the picture book yourself to find out.

Noni Says No, is by Heather Hartt-Sussman, a Montrealer, who also was a reporter for Hollywood Reporter and host of E! Entertainment television’s The Gossip Show. She is author of Nana’s Getting Married and she lives in Toronto. The book is illustrated by Genevieve Cote. Cote  is illustrater of several books. Hartt-Sussman has also written Here Comes Hortense and Nana’s Getting Married. Those two are illustrated by Georgia Graham. Cote’s drawings here are simple and cute, with hints of quirky thrown in. Graham’s are magical.

Noni Says No is nominated for an Ontario Library Association Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award.The awards bring recently published children’s picture books to Ontario children ages four to seven. The program promotes reading for enjoyment and beginning reader’s skills. Committees of public and school library practitioners select ten nominees each year. Students must read a minimum of five of those books to be able to vote. Voting is open for the month of April. The official voting day is Monday, April 23rd. to coincide with World Book and Copyright Day. Nonie Says No also was the recipient of an honourable mention in the OLA’s Best Bets List 2011.

Noni Says No, by Heather Hartt-Sussman, Tundra Books, $19.99, pub 2011, in Toronto, Ontario,

Her site is Http://www.heatherhartt.com/

This one gets a $$$$ out of $$$$$.

Use it to open conversation about feelings and to chat about how Noni might have handled things differently, or how she finds her voice. What a great tool for talking with your children. Perfect for age three and up to about 9.

I will draw five winners on March 14th.