The Weekly Pour: Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult

You know the drill, TBL friends! It’s New Release Tuesday and this week brought us the new Jodi Picoult, and we cleared the whole afternoon for it. Hollow Bones hits shelves September 15, and it's the kind of book you don't so much read as brace for.

About the Book

Molly Fitzgerald was two months old when her mother died at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. She grew up with what she'd call a healthy dread of disaster, which — reasonably enough — turned into a career. Molly now runs Rhode Island's Department for Emergency Preparedness, planning for the hurricane, the outbreak, the crash, the thing nobody wants to think about until it happens. She's good at it. She has a plan for everything.

Everything except her own marriage, as it turns out. Molly's husband Jesse is a police polygraph expert — a man whose entire job is catching the moment someone's telling themselves a story they need to believe — and when an unexpected upheaval cracks open their careful peace, both of them are forced to face the version of the truth they've been avoiding. Picoult moves the novel between 2001 and the present with her usual precision, and we will simply be needing a moment when we finish it.

Genre: Literary Fiction / Book Club Fiction

Perfect for fans of: By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult and My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.

This Week’s Pour

Molly's entire job is having a plan in reserve for the worst day imaginable, so we're pouring the Cinder Valentina in her honor — sturdy, dependable, exactly the kind of glass you want on hand when the story you've been telling yourself finally cracks.

Keeping it alcohol-free? Order a hot cup of our seasonal Pumpkin Chai Tea — layered flavors, a little complicated, and entirely honest about it, which is more than we can say for some marriages in this book.

However you take it: settle into your corner, keep the tissues within arm's reach, and let Molly's two timelines collide. We didn't see it coming. We should have. That's very on-theme, actually.

Come Sip & Read With Us

Hollow Bones just landed on our new release table. Grab your copy, order your beverage, and come sit with us while we all process this one together — book club, we're looking at you for October. Tag @thebookloungeid and tell us where you were when it got you.

Happy Reading (and Sipping!),

The Book Lounge Crew