“Wish You Were Here”

I didn’t want to read a book about Covid at all. And though Covid does provide the backdrop to this fictional story, it did not feel as though I was reliving the worst of it. I did want to read a Jodi Picoult book (I’ve seen her at Belmont Hill reunions as she married Mitch’s classmate) as I was curious. Diana and Finn are the young couple at the heart of the story - she is making her mark in the art auction world and he is a surgical resident in NYC. Their dream vacation gets interrupted in March 2020, and from that point on, a fantasy-like world and reality start to intertwine. The take-aways from this easy read were surprisingly deep - I ended up learning quite a bit about others’ perspectives during Covid (health care workers, the severely sick), but also appreciated Picoult’s character development of Diana who started to question her life choices pre and post pandemic.