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Feb 02, 2009

Stephanie rated it:

I was so disappointed in Grisham's latest work. He took more than half the book to create this wonderfully detailed plot and then three chapters to close the book. Three chapters in which he untwisted some of the elements of the plot, didn't resolve anything, and quit to early. I felt so unfulfilled at the end.

It kills me that his latest books haven't been up to par with his earlier works. In the beginning, his books were well-crafted and well-executed. After he began seeing his More...

11 comments like (35 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2009

Michael rated it:

Good books don't necessarily have to provide all the answers to every plot thread introduced into them. We want our characters to feel like they have lives beyond the confines of the printed page and that their story exists before, during and after the book we're reading. But a good book should at least provide the reader with some sense of closure and not the feeling like an editor was standing over the writer, pointing out that he or she had x-number of pages left or he or she was slowly rea More...

2 comments like (13 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2009

babyhippoface rated it:

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2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2009

Jeffrey rated it:

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0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2009

Carol rated it:

There must be a lot of pressure on authors who've had a series of best-sellers of a similar popular genre. Some authors come up with decent fresh ideas for the next adventure of their hero or hero-type, and some struggle after the first few books. Grisham seems to be struggling. He's back with one of his early formulas, young lawyer trapped into a compromising situation by a bad guy. This time, the set-up is less plausible than in the early novels. Sure, we readers suspend disbelief, but we don' More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Nick rated it:

No spoiler alert needed because there are no spoilers. Every aspect of this novel has been done in earlier works of 'legal fiction' by Grisham, and sections bolted together for this new novel. It was enjoyable and a prototypical Grisham read, but there was absolutely nothing new under this literary sun...

Grisham should parody the creation of the next Grisham novel, where a bright young legal graduate is coerced into a secretive law firm. On his first day, he is spirited into a baseme More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2009

Shannon rated it:

If you like Grisham's earliest works (the Firm, the Pelican Brief, etc.) you'll probably like this one too. It's fast paced, about a young lawyer in big firm who is in trouble. However, I didn't like this one as well as some of the others because I thought the ending was VERY unsatisfying. Grisham didn't tie up the ends the reader is dying to find out at the end of the novel. Darn! I'll be interested in what others say about it

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2009

Leah rated it:

In most circumstances, the "quick reads" or "beach books" are so lame-brain and cornball that I skim the book in a half-hour (i.e. James Patterson) However, I have read (really read, not skimmed) every one of Grisham's books. I enjoy Grisham because his stories are the same. You have the same kind of characters, the same dialogue, but it's always suspenseful. You always want to know what's going to happen next. I am comforted by his predictability, for some odd reason.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 08, 2009

Karen rated it:

I was thoroughly caught up in this book from page 1 and could barely put it down until the last page. Very exciting even though at times I wanted to yell at Kyle, the main character, not to fall for the blackmail scheme laid out before him. For anyone who has been to a few too many drinking parties in college, this will bring back those memories of regrets and situations that could have gotten out of hand. Kyle was involved in the latter, and thought it was all behind him, until he is approac More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Roberta rated it:

The book read fast as do most of Grisham's novels. I enjoyed most of the book except for the ending. I felt that Grisham could have tied things up a bit better with about 50 more pages.

The main character in this novel is a Yale law student who is blackmailed into taking a job with a huge New York law firm because of a mistake he made in college. We find out exactly how he does his best to avoid breaking the law in this book. Written in the vein of the Firm, but not as good.

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Nyra rated it:

SINOPSIS:

"Kyle Mc Avoy creció prácticamente en el pequeño bufete de su padre, en la tranquila ciudad de York, Pennsylvania. Saco excelentes notas durante toda la carrera de Derecho y fue elegido editor jefe del Yale Law Journal. Le esperaba un brillante futuro profesional.
Pero Kyle tambien tiene un secreto, un episodio de su vida de estudiante que le gustaria olvidar. Un secreto que acaba en manos de gente que le presiona para que acepte un puesto que no le gusta, aunqu More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 08, 2009

Sesh rated it:

With every book, Grisham gets worse. I keep telling myself I should stop reading the garbage he his dishing out, but I keep going back just to find out how bad it can get. What can I say? I give one star because for effort, just to type the words in. Otherwise there is not much to recommend in this book. The plot is weaker than Bud Lite, the ending is anti-climactic.

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2009

Jim rated it:

As usual with Grisham, I can't put a book down for very long until I've picked it up again. I would hope that there might be a follow-up to this one so I can learn about what happens to the "bad guys".

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2009

Jim rated it:

This is the slowest Grisham book I've read -- and I've read them all. It's tedious. It does not read like Grisham. There's almost no action until the end of the book, and then there's not much. What a disappointment.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2009

Betty marked it as to-read

Can't wait to read this - I've read all of his other books and saw him interviewed on the Today show the other morning. Looks like a good one!

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Terrie rated it:

The most anti-climactic book ever. What happened to the Grisham I used to love?

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 08, 2011

John added it

Grisham built his reputation by giving readers a reason to cheer for his protagonists. Intriguing tales focused on complex plots and were described in artful narrative. That happens with this book too and gives us a peek at the life facing some corporate attorneys fresh from prestigious schools.

Kyle McAvoy was an undergraduate at Duquesne University when a party in his apartment resulted in rape accusation against him and several of his roommates, but the police found insufficient evidence to More...

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Mar 12, 2009

Claire rated it:

Although I only gave this two stars (for its two-dimensional quality), that's twice as many as I've BEEN giving John Grisham for his last decade of writing). I'm hopeful that this means that Grisham is on a climb back up to the quality of plot he used to write in his earliest days (quality that seemed to grind to a painful halt soon after The Testament).

*****SPOILER ALERT*******

This book is really The Firm, reworked. The first 3/4 of the book has the protaganist Kyle h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 07, 2009

Darbyscloset rated it:

The Associate

John Grisham’s latest book is “The Associate”, which I just finished reading. I always enjoy Grisham’s work and so I was eager to read this book once it was released to the public.
Grisham’s previous release was “The Appeal”. The first part of this book I was a little disappointed, for I thought he was rewriting the same story as in “The Appeal”, yet with different characters. I should of known better for just as the background was being laid out for the reader More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 02, 2009

Chuck rated it:

This is the best Grisham in years. It gets back to what he did well in his earlier fiction, but it is still fresh.

Kyle McAvoy is about to graduate from law school, and had planned to work in the non-profit world and reject corporate law. But two men appear who have manufactured an "incident" from his past--not true, but a public accusation would have been enough to ruin his life. So Kyle is forced to accept a job at a law firm which is embroiled in a law suit over who ow More...

0 comments like

Feb 20, 2009

Randy rated it:

Gosh, it seems like so long ago since I bought this novel called A Time To Kill by John Grisham. Now, some 20 novels later, he's penned some I'd rather forget but he remains one of the few I buy hardbound.

The Associate is the usual Grisham. By that I mean, the guy is always a helluva writer, he's always got a character you love, a way with a story that compells you to read on, an interesting setup. Any Grisham is worth a read. Even a bad Grisham is hands a feet above most of the law More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 23, 2011

Marie-jo rated it:

Grisham is back, state some critics. Not so fast, claim others.

The plot: Kyle McAvoy is a top graduate from one of the top law schools --Yale. He can work for any brilliant legal firm he chooses. Only other people choose for him and ask him to spy and report the secrets of a prestigious law firm in Manhattan. How can these people (this organization?) make such demands? They have in their hand the video of an alleged rape. If Kyle was not a participant in such a crime, he was in the roo More...

0 comments like

Aug 04, 2011

Lars-christian rated it:

I was somewhat warned beforehand by the dismal reviews on amazon, but I decided to take a chance on it. Execting it to be horrible might at least improve it a little bit, and it probably did.

Spoiler:

This is a story of a young lawyer-to-be (he passes the bar during the book), who falls prey to some bad guys and gets blackmailed into a job he doesn't want.

All in all this has the potential for a good story, but as you read on you realize that something needs to happen, and fast, because the book i More...

0 comments like

Jul 23, 2011

Josh rated it:

This should have a higher rating. Grisham was so close to nailing this one that it's really pretty frustrating. I liked the book, but I should have liked it a lot more, except for a few issues that downgraded the whole affair for me.

1. The story resolves itself too rapidly for my tastes. It's one thing to start running things at a breakneck pace once all the players are in place and the action really starts to kick in to gear, another thing to just sort of draw things to a stop just as More...

0 comments like

May 23, 2011

Miss Leacock rated it:

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0 comments like

May 05, 2011

Kyra rated it:

This is the 2nd incredibly disappointing book I've read by Grisham now. Unless he plans to write a sequel to actually end the book there is no excuse for this. It's like he got bored 3/4 of the way through & gave up & sent it to his editor or he didn't know how to end it so he just gave up - thinking we'd buy anything with his name on it because his first few books were pretty good.

An elaborate twisty set up with many characters and then NOTHING HAPPENS. I'm ok with "bad guys More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 10, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2011

Brittany rated it:

“It’s Criminal!”

I am a positive person and I feel bad about putting negativity out there, especially in a book review. I must say, however, that The Associate by John Grisham was a terrible book. I hadn’t read anything by Grisham since The Firm and The Pelican Brief while in high school. At the time, they seemed like somewhat smart novels. I came across The Associate at Half Price Books and thought “why not?” Boy, has time changed the author—and not for the better. My mom put it bes More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 16, 2010

Cindy rated it:

I was looking forward to this, not having read John Grisham for a while. Normally, I am caught up from page 1, but for some reason the story seemed to drag and it took me until three quarters of the way through to be gripped to read for greater lengths of time. The plot was a bit same-old, same-old, not fresh at all. The ending was very different though, in that there wasn't one. There was no closure, no sense of satisfaction, in fact I double-checked to see that the last few pages hadn't co More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 10, 2010

eyup rated it:

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)