Jodi Picoult is not a GREAT writer and her books are formulaic, but the ones that I have read are also well-researched and interesting with various points of view, “moral dilemmas”and always a twist/surprise.

Change of Heart concerns a convicted murderer, Shay Bourne, on death row, who wishes to donate his heart to the daughter/sister of his victim. The story is told, in very short chapters, from the viewpoint of June, the wife/mother of the murder victims, Maggie, an ACLU attorney, Michael, a priest who also served on the jury that convicted Shay and Lucius, the inmate neighbor of Shay. The issues handled are the death penalty and religion and others.

"The really interesting thing, to me, is that somehow religion stopped being about trying to find honest solutions...and started being about ritual. Instead of searching for understanding on their own, orthodox religion came along and said, 'Do x,y, and z- and the world will be a better place." (261)

"It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing." (279)

"Someone once told me that when you give birth to a daughter, you've just met the person whose hand you'll be holding the day you die." (356)