Mad Honey

Mad Honey (2002) is a novel co-written by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. The story follows the case of 18-year-old Asher Fields, who is charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Lily Campanello. Although initially convinced of his innocence, his mother, Olivia McAfee, can’t help being reminded of the similarities between Asher and her abusive ex-husband, Asher’s father. Through the story’s characters, Mad Honey explores themes of violence and abuse in relationships as well as gender expression and identity.

Jodi Picoult is a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including The Book of Two Ways (2020), Small Great Things (2016), The Storyteller (2013), and My Sister's Keeper (2004). She has received numerous awards, including the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction and the Sarah Josepha Hale Award. Jennifer Finney Boylan is a writer, professor, and transgender activist, and author of the bestselling memoir, She's Not There (2003). In addition to authoring bestselling books, she’s a contributing writer for the New York Times opinion page and has served on the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD) board of directors.

This guide is based on the Hodder & Stoughton Kindle Edition of Mad Honey.

Content Warning: This guide contains mentions and descriptions of anti-trans violence and death by suicide that are depicted in Mad Honey. In addition, this guide quotes and obscured the use of the F-word.

Plot Summary

The chapters of Mad Honey alternate between Olivia and Lily’s perspectives. They start at the same point in the story’s timeline, the day of Lily’s death, and Olivia’s narration moves forward in time from then on, while Lily’s recounts events leading backward from her death.

Lily Campanello, born Liam O’Meara, is a trans girl born and raised in Seattle. When she’s 12, her mother, Ava Campanello, takes her to Point Reyes, California, because Lily’s father is abusive and refuses to accept her gender identity. In Point Reyes, Lily starts puberty blockers and eventually hormone therapy. Ava refuses to let her get gender confirmation surgery, however, believing she’s still too young. In Lily’s sophomore year, she begins dating a boy from school, Jonah Cooper, but doesn’t tell him she’s trans. However, after her father turns up at a school fencing competition and outs her to her friends, Jonah stops speaking to her. A week before the Valentine’s Day dance, he apologizes and asks her out. After Lily ignores a warning from Sorel, one of her former friends, to leave the dance, Jonah and his friends humiliate her there, crowning her “Valentine’s King AND Queen” and later holding her down and stripping her naked waist-down in the parking lot. Lily attempts death by suicide the next day but survives. After she heals, Ava agrees to let Lily have the surgery. Afterward, they move to Adams, New Hampshire, where Ava decides to refrain from telling anyone about Lily’s past.

Lily meets and befriends new classmates Asher Fields and Maya Banerjee, who have been friends all their life. Lily assumes that they’re together, but Asher asks Lily out, and they begin dating. Asher’s mother, Olivia McAfee, is an apiarist. Asher and she have lived on their farm for 12 years. Olivia divorced Asher’s father, Dr. Braden Fields, because he was physically abusive to her. Asher and Lily are smitten with each other, and they grow closer. Asher confides about how he secretly meets Braden once a month at a restaurant outside town, without Olivia knowing. Although head-over-heels for Asher, Lily is cautious about what she reveals. She initially claims her father is dead and doesn’t tell Asher she’s trans. In a couple instances, Asher turned violent toward her, though he was profusely apologetic and attentive afterward.

She eventually confides to him about her past attempt at death by suicide. Shortly thereafter, they have sex. Memories of Jonah’s assault cause her to withdraw from him. He’s distraught; she eventually tells him she’s trans, and he withdraws, in turn, needing time to process. Maya consoles a heartbroken Lily that life will go on without Asher, but he eventually reconciles with her, accepting her for who she is, and they have sex again. A week after Thanksgiving, he spontaneously visits Braden at his home to meet his new wife and Asher’s half-brothers, and asks Lily to go along. Upon watching the family through their window, Asher realizes that Braden deliberately excludes Asher from this new life, and leaves without going onside. Lily consoles him and tells him that her father is alive but she wishes he were dead because of how he hurt her. As an early Christmas present, Asher tracks down Lily’s father and invites him to Adams, hoping to prompt a reconciliation. However, Lily is furious and stops talking to Asher. She simultaneously develops a fever and stays home from school. After five days without contact, Asher visits her. Later that night, he calls Olivia from the police station with the news that Lily might be dead.

Olivia arrives at the police station, and Asher is questioned about the details surrounding Lily’s death; he claims to have found her lying bleeding and unconscious at the base of the stairs upon arrival. Lily is pronounced dead from a brain bleed, apparently caused by blunt force trauma to her head. Asher becomes the prime suspect in what the police believe is Lily’s murder and arrest him after finding his fingerprints and DNA in her room. Olivia calls her brother, Jordan McAfee, a famous defense attorney. Jordan and his wife, Selena, an investigator, begin to work on Asher’s case, while Olivia tries to secure the money for Asher’s bail. Eventually, she asks Braden for help after Asher tries to die by suicide in jail.

The trial begins in May, five months after Lily’s death. The prosecution paints Asher as an abuser, liar, and murderer, and among their witnesses is the medical examiner who performed Lily’s autopsy. Dr. Rooney McBride’s testimony reveals that Lily was transgender, a fact unknown to everyone in the courtroom except Ava and Asher. Maya testifies for the prosecution too, recounting when Asher grabbed Lily so hard in a moment of jealousy that he bruised her arm. Olivia begins to wonder whether Asher, like Braden, is abusive, so although she testifies as a character witness for Asher, she affirms that one can love someone who is abusive, even as she confesses her own history of physical abuse by her ex-husband. Asher then insists on taking the stand and unexpectedly confesses that he knew about Lily being trans but didn’t care—he loved her anyway.

As the defense begins to lose hope, Olivia and Selena inadvertently stumble upon a possibility that Lily’s easy bruising could have resulted from the estrogen she was taking as part of the hormone cocktail. Jordan calls in an expert pathologist, who reexamines the autopsy and concludes, from the pattern and amount of Lily’s brain bleed, that she had an underlying blood disorder called thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), which one can acquire through the administration of estrogen and could have caused neurological symptoms such as dizziness, easy bruising, abnormal bleeding, and fever. Jordan concludes that Lily’s death was a result of her tripping, falling down the stairs, and hitting her head, which caused the brain bleed. Asher is acquitted.

A few weeks after the trial, Maya visits Asher and inadvertently reveals what really happened: Maya was in love with Asher and visited Lily to get her to break up with him. The girls fought over Lily’s phone, from which Maya attempted to send Asher a breakup text; in the process, Maya accidentally shoved Lily, knocking her downstairs. Terrified, Maya fled the scene, just before Asher’s arrival. Despite Maya’s confession, the prosecution doesn’t press charges. Ten months after Lily’s death, Asher is away for college at Plymouth State. Ava leaves the town of Adams, paying Olivia one last visit before going. Although still grieving, she’s glad Olivia didn’t lose a child too, and Olivia gives Ava a jar of honey to take with her.