For eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duty-- they've grown so close it seems they have always been a part of each other's lives. Parents and children alike have been best friends, so it's no surprise that in high school Chris and Emily's friendship blossoms into something more. They've been soul mates since they were born. So when midnight calls from the hospital come in, no one is ready for the appalling truth: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head. There's a single unspent bullet in the gun that Chris took from his father's cabinet-- a bullet that Chris tells police he intended for himself. But a local detective has doubts about the suicide pact that Chris has described.
This was such a dramatic book. I did like the way the book was in present then flopped back to the times when Chris and Emily first met, and how they became with a couple. I also found myself drawn to the how the family who was very close friends became torn apart over the fact that the Golds believed that Chris was responsible for Emily's death because she was pregnant. The thoughts in Chris's mind when he found out Emily was pregnant is truly remarkable. Picoult's writing is simply thrilling and I urge many to read it.
