Although this is a sequel to The Firm, it can be read alone. The beginning of the book reminds us what happens in The Firm. Abby and Mitch are now living in New York and Mitch works at one of the biggest law firms. He is an international lawyer and travels the globe. During a trip to Libya, his associate is kidnapped. Mitch is tasked with raising the ransom and Abby isn the go-between for the kidnappers and Mitch. The story is fast paced and thoroughly entertaining.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Readers who loved the Firm may find this book disappointing. Fast forward fifteen years, Mitch goes back to Memphis to talk with a death row client but the client has committed suicide. Back in New York, Mitch is sent to Italy where he accepts a job in Libya in a suit about a bridge to nowhere. When a team member, Giovanna is kidnapped, Mitch is in the center of the quest to find her and what's behind the kidnapping. No courtroom drama, lots of footwork and boring negotiations. Not what I expected.

There is a reason why John Grisham is a best-selling author - he is a master storyteller.! I started reading this in the afternoon and could not put it down. The detail, the characters, the location descriptions all make for an intriguing read. Given the recent world events taking place, the plot may be difficult for some but John Grisham handles the storyline with a mature respect.
It was great to catch up with Mitch and Abby. I personally love a sequel and while this doesn't pick up directly from The Firm, it does give a little detail as to the "in-between" years.
For anyone that likes other Grisham novels, likes a thriller, likes a book you can't put down until you know what happens - this book is for you!

#TheExchange #NetGalley

I was thrilled to slip back into the lives of Mitch and Abby, and was excited to continue their story. I didn't feel as thrilled as I did with "The Firm", but I was very happy to read the continuation of their story. I did feel like it was wrapped up too abruptly though. I wanted more.

A look at Mitch and Abby McDeere and what happened after they left the Memphis law firm—yes, that firm. After idly roaming around the world, the McDeere’s go to New York and find success, Mitch with the largest law firm in New York and Abby as a food editor along with their twin boys. With Mitch’s international speciality he is asked to go to Rome and speak to one of their associates, Luca, regarding a client involving Libya and a bridge that leads to nowhere. That was worth a laugh but perhaps it’s just bad timing in history for this book to be released. So we’re left to a screwup and Luca’s daughter is kidnapped. Mitch is flying internationally the rest of the time while Abby is at home working when she becomes involved with the possible release of Luca’s daughter. Mr. Grisham is a great storyteller but this book just didn’t reflect what I have come to respect in his work. There are two redeeming qualities in this work to close out the story which I leave it to you, the reader, to discover. Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for an advanced copy of this book; this is my honest opinion.

The Exchange John Grisham

I must say I enjoyed this book. Mr. Grisham is an excellent storyteller.

In The Exchange, we return to the McDeere family, Abby, Mitch and their twin boys, Clark and Carter. After his escape from the brouhaha at Bendini, Abby and Mitch hid for a number of years and when it was safe, moved to New York. They were living a good life. Abby was a cookbook editor and Mitch was a partner at the law firm of Scully and Pershing, an elite law firm with offices world-wide. Things were going swimmingly until…

He was given what was ostensibly the worst case of his career. It involved the Lybian government reneging on a debt it owed to a client of Scully and Pershing. It seemed like a pretty clear cut operation but by the time this case was done, there would be four dead and one Scully lawyer kidnapped, a young female lawyer who happened to be the daughter of one of the Scully partners who tan the Italian office. The ransom request was huge. Could they get the money together in time to save Giovannia or would she also be beheaded in a savage death.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for allowing me to review this manuscript.

I generally steer clear of legal books because who wants to read about what they do all day, every day but I absolutely remember getting sucked into books like The Firm and The Pelican Brief. I loved them. So I was intrigued when I saw that the new book is a follow up to The Firm. Let’s just say, I should have known better. Partly just really bad timing to read a book about hostages but also, it was so over the top and just too much happening and too many horrible decisions. It was not the salacious, juicy and compelling fun of those early books. Did I read the whole book? Yes. Did I need to know what happened so I plowed through it? Yes again. Am I wondering why I did that? Also yes. That is my review.

Mitch and his wife Abby had eight year old twins and living a good life. Earlier before the twins they had to constantly look over their backs from Mitch’s previous job! Now he was with Scully & Pershing and things were definitely better.
He had been involved in death row cases so when he got the chance for his newest case he jumped on it. It involved one of his associates daughter Giovanna helping Mitch. Things turned south rather quickly and it involved Abby being part of the rescue. Mitch and the boys had a place in Maine to hide out and Abby’s parents came to help when Mitch had to be gone!

The people demanding the money was ruthless to say the least and they were brutal. Lots of demanding and scraping up money and time restraints in this plot. John Grisham never disappoints.

I received this ARC from Netgalley for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

The Firm was the first Grisham book that I read. It was heart pounding and scary.

This book has the same main characters. Two minor appearances by characters from the first book fill in some of the mystery of what happened to Mitch and Abby in the 15 years since the first story unfurled. You do not need to have read the original book to enjoy this one.

Grisham writes a great story. Mitch is now the father to young twin boys. His wife, Abby, is now an editor of cookbooks. They are living the good life as he's a partner for the biggest law firm in the world. As such, he travels the world for cases. As he reluctantly heads to Libya in preparation for a big lawsuit, some of his colleagues and bodyguards encounter terrorism and are taken. This story encompasses the mad dash to meet the terrorists demands. It's frustrating, exhausting, and terrifying because Mitch's family is caught in the middle.

I foresee a third book in the series.

Master storyteller and king of legal thrillers, John Grisham (a favorite), is back fifteen years after The Firm with the highly anticipated THE EXCHANGE. The movie version released 30 years ago, starring Tom Cruise as lawyer Mitch McDeere, remains his highest-grossing adaptation.

The star, of course, is Mitch McDeere, now 41 years old and still married to his wife, Abby McDeere, with two sons. Living in Manhattan, Mitch is a partner at Scully & Pershing (a global international firm), and Abby is a cookbook editor.

Fans, do not expect THE EXCHANGE to fill in all the gaps about what happened since the explosive ending of THE FIRM. This book could be a standalone, and not much is discussed about the mafia, FBI, Mitch taking the money, etc. THE EXCHANGE is more of a crime action thriller than a legal thriller. Something that Tom Cruise would be right at home in.

THE EXCHANGE takes place mainly in New York City, where Mitch is a partner at a massive international law firm, and Gaddafi’s Libya, where he goes on behalf of a client, and things become complicated from here on out.

Grisham does provide a summary that after Mitch spent time overseas following their escape from the corrupt law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke —they are back living in New York City, and Mitch is a partner in a high-profile international law firm and works for wealthy global clients. The firm is a hundred years old and boasts prestige, power, and money.

Mitch does take on a few pro-bono cases each year they require. He is tired of these cases, and he hates losing and letting down his clients. This leads us to a brief trip to Memphis after Willie Backstrom encourages him to meet regarding a man on death row, but that does not follow through. While in Memphis, he detours and meets with his old buddy Lamar Quinn to catch up. (I was hoping for more here).

Other than the brief trip to Memphis, the sequel has little connection to the plot of The Firm. This turned out to be a red herring, and he never returned. However, maybe a #3 will return!

With over 400 million copies sold, Grisham is a rock star tackling legal, racial, corporate, environmental, capital punishments, and injustice working with the Innocence Project. (The Innocence Project books are my favorite Southern stories by Grisham).

Grisham is a passionate advocate for the wrongfully convicted and an opponent of the death penalty; he sits on the board of the Innocence Project and speaks frequently about criminal justice issues.

In THE EXCHANGE , Mitch does a lot of globetrotting when he agrees to help out with a lawsuit of mega million for Luca Sandroni, a partner at his firm, out of the Rome office. He has cancer and needs Mitch to take over and his daughter, Giovanna, to assist.

Mitch is comfortable with global clients and travels since he and Abby lived in Italy for some time. However, on the day they were supposed to meet the client, Mitch gets food poisoning (was this planned by the powers that be), and Luca urges his daughter to go without him. However, the trip turns tragic.

The client is a Turkish construction company suing the government of Libya for an unpaid debt of $400 million regarding a bridge.

From terrorism, brutal murders, conspiracy, and kidnapping. Giovanna is kidnapped, and the demands are high, and Lucas has difficulty raising the money, even from the firm. Abby becomes involved when a mysterious woman reaches out to her to be the go-between. They send brutal, violent videos of the murders, and Giovanna could be next.

While this is John Grisham, and he is a brilliant writer delivering his books each year consistently, this is not like The Firm. It is more global, and much of the book involves dealing with the kidnapping. While this may appeal to a specific audience, I prefer the Southern settings and taking Mitch back to his roots and Memphis. However, different readers like books set outside the South, and publishers must consider the total audience.

However, there are still thrills and fun as Mitch still does not live up to his in-laws' expectations, and we get to have a brief encounter note about his family. Plus, he uses some of the money he stole from the mafia to try and get Giovanna back.

However, I would like to know how he escaped the Mafia and has taken a high-profile position, and they do not seem to be worried about that—a lot of unanswered questions. I even went back to listen to the audiobook of The Firm again to refresh myself. No, he still has not confessed to cheating that one time.

In a recent TIME MAGAZINE article, Grisham even mentions this. I highly recommend reading it. Very good.

I wonder if there will be a #3 that has to do with the meeting with Lamar in Memphis. I would love to see them back in Memphis, where everything began.

It was nice hearing about the Peabody and other familiar sites in Memphis. I enjoyed THE EXCHANGE, but not what I was expecting (prefer more legal and less crime globetrotting). A huge fan of the author's, giving this one a 4.5 stars versus the usual 5 stars. If you were a fan of Mitch and Abby, I highly recommend reading it but do not expect to pick up where it left off in THE FIRM. Will there be another movie?

I look forward to reading Camino Ghosts coming June 4, 2024. Bookstore owner Bruce Cable has reunited with Mercer Mann for another thrilling mystery packed with sun, sand, and mayhem. Filled with unpredictable twists, the return to Camino Island is guaranteed to be this summer’s perfect escape.

Since breaking out with THE FIRM in 1991, Grisham has released 48 consecutive New York Times No. 1 bestsellers, a feat no other writer has matched, per the TIME MAGAZINE.

Many thanks to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced reading copy for an honest opinion.

Blog Review posted @
JudithDCollins.com
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
Pub Date: Oct 17, 2023
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Oct 2023 Must-Read Books
Oct Newsletter

I've been a John Grisham fan for a long time, ever since reading The Firm. I admit to getting away from some of his more recent work but I was thrilled to have the chance to read "the sequel" to The Firm when it came up on Net Galley. Now that I've finished The Exchange, I am really confused. I've read the book and am really trying to understand the point.

We know going in that Mitch and Abby McDeere are at the center of The Exchange and are expecting an action-packed episode of intrigue similar to what happened in Memphis 15 years before. What is delivered is a bit disjointed and reads more like a travel diary than a legal thriller. Told from the third person point of view, there is a dispassionate element that makes it hard to connect to the characters. The sequence of events also leaves the reader a bit at a loss. There is a thriller/travel element that might play out well in a screenplay, but not on the written page. The amount of bouncing from place to place is distracting and a bit boring.

The biggest issue for me though - I reached the end of the book and really didn't know what had been accomplished or what the overall point of the story was. I understand the sequence of events and what was accomplished at the surface level, but what is the deeper meaning? What wrong was righted or what was contributed to the greater good?

Grisham writes crime thrillers like no other, this (kinda) sequel to The Firm centers around McDeere’s as in The Firm but they are older and more mature with the same somewhat flawed center of moral justice. I appreciate that Grisham writes strong woman characters in some of his books and I wish that he gave more room to Abby in this one. The Exchange is an international thriller involving sinister and evil acting groups without a specific villain and yet it works.

3.5 stars, rounded up. I’m a little torn with this review: on the one hand, this was an excellent thriller. A little less legal than classic Grisham and more international negotiation, but still a highly compelling story. It was interesting to see one person working out of survivors’ guilt to get his coworker home by cajoling money out of three national governments and a multi-billion dollar corporation. It liked more to a spy thriller than a legal thriller, and I’m not mad about it.

On the other hand, I don’t understand why this was necessarily a sequel to The Firm. I get that the main character, the one fighting to save his coworker & friend’s daughter, needed to be highly competent and likable to the audience - I just don’t know why it had to be Mitch McDeere. Grisham had had no trouble in the past creating sympathetic main characters, so why bring back Mitch? His backstory as part of The Firm factored so little into the overall story that it was almost irrelevant.

Overall it was a really well-written thriller but replace Mitch with nearly any other person and the story works just as well.

Thank you to NetGalley, John Grisham, and Doubleday Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

There is something very comforting about slipping back into the adventures of Mitch McDeere, but weirdly enough my favourite parts of the book were before the inciting incident even took place. I wanted to see him be a high powered lawyer, fighting high powered fights, but instead there was a lot of negotiation and Bourne-esque moving through countries. I'd say that it's pretty solid and moves at a good clip. If you liked the Firm, you'll have fun like I did diving back into things, but I wanted more court time and less international negotiations.

It was also hard to get attached to new characters that we only know briefly. That said, I love Grisham and he's weirdly a comfort author for me. I'd recommend it for anyone who loved the Firm or wants a good law thriller to push them through the cool autumn days.

Thank you Doubleday books and NetGalley!

What a blast from the past in reading this follow up to the Firm. I have not read Grisham in a long time, and I appreciated diving into another book of his after all this time. It was nice to catch up with Mitch and Abby. The legal drama storyline was quite good, and I hope Grisham writes more!

Went into this book so excited to find out what happened to Abby and Mitch after all the events of the Firm. The story does start off strong and you don't feel like you need to reread the first book (or watch the movie if you're a big Tom Cruise fan!). Everything is fairly well laid out. However, getting to 53% of the book has been a slog. It feels like the plot wasn't well thought out and we jump around for no real reason. Disappointed that this wasn't the usual thrilling book from Grisham we expect when it comes to intrigue and mystery.

Thanks for the free book PRH International

Oops. The truth is that I started reading this book with great enthusiasm and it was a small disappointment. I think something similar happened to me when I read Jaque al Psicoanalista, which was coming from PUM up, and although that book was not a big disappointment, The Exchange did not convince me.

The Firm was published in 1991 and comes the second part, The Exchange, which is now published in 2023. Many years passed and many people, perhaps, longed for this book. I am not a FANATIC of the author, I read several that I liked and now I had the opportunity to read this book.

I didn't connect at any time, I didn't feel that there was anything exciting, it was all quite monotonous, linear, without ups and downs, like something was missing. I didn't feel like it was a big mystery, or that there were any big plot twists. And it's a shame because I had a lot of faith in this book.

I'm going to be attentive to see what Grisham fans think, because I would love to know what they think of this book and how it was handled. The interesting thing about the reading community is that we can share our point of view and maybe someone else finds it something super different. I love it! That's why I invite you to read them if you like the author.

5 Stars! John Grisham does it again with this follow up to The Firm. Descriptive context and a gripping storyline will pull you in straight away and leave you wanting more

My review is from a pre-release digital ARC compliments of the publisher via NetGalley.
I’ve looked forward to this read but somehow it missed the mark for me. Perhaps the unrest in the world, especially with the recents events in Gaza between the Israeli’s and the militant Palestinian group, Hamas has overwhelmed many of us, myself included and reading this type of novel at this point in time was not a good choice for me. The locale of this novel is primarily in the Middle East, Libya and other locations as it jumps all over the globe. It revolves around the kidnapping of an American lawyer from a prestigious firm, where our protagonist Mitch McDeere is employed. He and his wife Abby are happily settled into a routine life with their twin sons when Mitch is called back into action to work on this kidnapping. It just got a bit convoluted from there, They don’t know who the assailant is and the possibilities are explored by several characters over several chapters that just got tedious for me.

I found it hard to engage with the main plot or enjoy this read. I read for entertainment, and often for escapism. I usually like legal dramas but this one just didn’t do it for me. I won’t discourage anyone from trying it, however, see for yourself.

Mitch McDeere is back. We met Mitch McDeere in The Firm, and when we left him, he and his wife, Abby, were on a beach somewhere. In this book we have fast forwarded 15 years, Mitch and Abby live in Manhattan, and Mitch is a partner in the largest law firm in the world, Scully and Pershing. They have offices all over the globe. Mitch is summoned to Rome to meet with another partner who is ill. Mitch is tasked with taking over a large case in Libya. When I saw this location, I already knew we were going to have problems. When another lawyer from the firm is kidnapped, Mitch is tasked with finding a way to have her returned home safely.

There is a lot of globetrotting in this book as the partners try to determine how to settle the lawsuit for their biggest client and also save one of their own. You will get a fast course in international law and how it works. This book is much more complex than John Grisham's usual legal thrillers, but you do not have to be a legal eagle to enjoy this book. It seemed we were in another country every time I turned a page, but it was necessary in order to fully understand this plot line. There are some bloody scenes, but we are dealing with murderers who have no qualms about taking a life, so it is necessary to the story as well. I have to confess that a lot of what ends up happening was unexpected and a little shocking. I have to wonder if we are being left with the possibility of a third novel starring Mitch McDeere. I guess we will have to wait and see.

Thank you to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for this ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily.