Review of Nineteen Minutes

Written by Jodi Picoult

I have never read this book before.

Ratings: Amazon: 4.5 out of 5 stars (37,083). Goodreads: 4.18 out of 5 stars (428,076)

Summary: A deep dive into a school shooting that was motivated by intense bullying and abuse.

According to Pen America’s 2024 article, Nineteen Minutes is the most commonly banned book. The author, Jodi Picoult, states: “Nineteen Minutes is banned not because it’s about a school shooting, but because of a single page that depicts a date rape and uses anatomically correct words for the human body. It is not gratuitous or salacious, and it is not – as the book banners claim – porn. In fact, hundreds of kids have told me that reading Nineteen Minutes stopped them from committing a school shooting, or showed them they were not alone in feeling isolated. My book, and the ten thousand others that have been pulled off school library shelves this year, give kids a tool to deal with an increasingly divided and difficult world. These book banners aren’t helping children. They are harming them.”

My take: This book shows how much abuse kids cause and receive, and how others don’t stop it. It does feature timeline jumping back and forth, which can be jarring for some people. I personally enjoyed it because it gave some great depth to the characters and how they found themselves in the first chapter.