Member Reviews
I thought I loved John Grisham's books. It has been a while since I read one of his books. This one did not live up to my expectations. The writing was dull and dry. It read like a legal brief. The plot was good and I enjoyed the characters. However, I felt it was a chore to finish.
I received this galley from Net Galley.
Thank you Doubleday publishers and NetGalley for the arc ebook of The Exchange.I have read 99% of John Grisham’s books over the years and have found this the most disappointing. Lots of characters that say the same things over and over, what a bore! The really only connection between the novel and The Firm,written many years ago,are the same two main characters. You get bits and pieces of what happened to them 12-13 years previously to tie the couple to their present life and the rest of story about a young lawyer’s kidnapping is just the main theme creating no tension what so ever except for a lot of private plane flying all over many countries for meetings to accumulate a gigantic sum of money for her rescue by a deadline. I’m sure many will read this due to author’s popularity but remember,I warned you,boring.
Grisham is so incredible and this book is no exception. I love the revisit to the world of The Firm and found myself utterly enthralled to the point that, after finishing, I went back and read The Firm again. The characters are dynamic and real, the plot kept me hooked and his writing, near flawless. Whether you are a fan of Grisham's works or not (yet), this book will entertain you and keep you engaged. That is what reading is all about!
Is John Grisham really the author of “The Exchange?” While over the years, Grisham’s books have been unevenly written this one is a major disappointment. Here’s the plot summary: A lawyer (Mitch McDeere from “The Firm”} now with the world's biggest law firm takes on a case that features a Turkish construction company against the government of Libya while Gaddafi is still in power. A young woman is assigned to do the grunt work. On a visit to Libya, the woman is kidnapped by a bunch of thugs. Numerous graphic descriptions of how the thugs kill the men protecting the woman are included. Kidnappers want a huge amount of money, so Mitch flies around Europe talking to people in an effort to collect. Mitch’s wife (who used to be a school teacher but is now a cookbook editor) is chosen as the ransom currier. You can guess the ending.
Written in an out-of-control third-person omniscient there are way too many characters, none of whom are well-developed or interesting. No sense of place. And, the first 40 pages of the book have nothing to do with the rest of it. But, I was interested enough to read the last 100 pages in one sitting.
Years after barely surviving "The Firm," Mitch McDeere, now flourishing as a partner in the New York office of Scully & Pershing, the largest law firm in the world, now finds himself and his family again enmeshed in extreme danger, this time involving an mysterious group of ruthless kidnappers in Libya, a valuable hostage, a ransom of millions of dollars, bombings, executions, many nations, and nail-biting negotiations. Yikes!
I was very excited to be able to read an advanced copy of John Grisham's The Exchange, (thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday) the first sequel to his early blockbuster The Firm, which pretty much launched his career. I was so excited that I decided to re-read the Firm in preparation for the sequel. I had seen the movie many times, but had not read the novel since the early 1990s. I enjoyed my re-read of The Firm immensely. So much depth and a lot of differences from the movie. But I digress.
The Firm ends with Mitch McDeere and his wife Abby escaping from the Morolto mob family by the skin of their teeth, to spend years on the run in the Caribbean. The very premise of the Firm was that Mitch would have to always be on the watch as the mob never forgets, and he had a target on his back. Even though Mitch provided enough evidence to indict the entire Bendini law firm, and the major players in the mob that were behind the firm, the assumption was his life as he knew it was done.
The Exchange takes place 15 years later. Mitch is now 41, and a partner at Scully and Pershing, the world's largest law firm. He an Abby had left the islands and made it to Italy, where they lived for a few years and then to London, where he managed to get a job as an associate in the London office. No name change, his law license had never been lost (he did violate the privilege of his legitimate clients after all).. They just started fresh, and when the novel starts, Mitch and Abby are in New York, where he is a partner, and she is the editor of cookbooks for a publisher, and have two twin boys. The book has a brief return to Memphis and an tense encounter with Mitch's one-time friend Lamar Quinn, but shifts to a international story in which Mitch is tasked to take on a law suit from a Turkish company which had been cheated out of $400M by Libya's Colonel Gadaffi for the construction of a bridge to nowhere in the middle of the desert. From there, it results in the kidnapping of a young Scully associate, and the rest of the story is the effort to get her back.
I wish I could say this was a great sequel. It was an ok story, but in all honesty, the story could have been told with any characters. It did not need to be Mitch and Abby McDeere. Sure, Grisham threw his faithful fans small pieces of meat from time to time, filling in tiny pieces of the McDeere backstory in the 15 years since Memphis, but the bulk of the story was a fairly uninteresting set of attempts to find the money for a ransom. And yes, Abby gets a interesting role in the story which I won't spoil.
I kept hoping there would be a tie-in back to what should have been an ever-present threat from some distant Morololto family member determined to get revenge, but it never happened. I wanted to see how Mitch and Abby emerged from being on the run. How they managed to get the ever-present threat beyond them. The book was ok, but I think Grisham's fans deserved more.
I want to thank the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this book.
Contains Spoilers
I have read almost every John Grisham book. (I’ve only read a couple of the middle grade Theodore Boone series.) I am always anticipate the twists and turns our main character has to negotiate for a satisfying outcome. I imagine Mitch(Tom Cruise), and Abby(Jeanne Tripplehorn) acting out the scenes.
The return to Memphis and the death row portion of story were an unnecessary section of the novel. My first thought when Mitch was heading to meet the client on death row was I’ve already read The Chamber. I don’t understand why we needed to meet his old coworker either.
I also don’t know why there was the section about the twin Italian brothers preparing meals in their apartment kitchen.
Almost every encounter with a new character I had to wonder why were they being mentioned. (Especially the three Libyan soldiers that were hung.) I’m not sure why I needed to know their names and how many children they had.
Other questions were why select Abby to interact with the kidnapper terrorist, would Abby really fly to Morocco to meet with kidnappers? I felt jet lagged from Mitch flying back and forth all over the world.
I kept thinking the whole kidnapping plot was staged and Mitch would discover that Luca(pretending to be ill) and his daughter were a part of the scheme.
The ending was rushed and I thought many things were left unresolved.
The follow-up to "The Firm" where Mitch McDeere is now a partner in the largest law firm in the world certainly does not disappoint. Well written and easy to read story - loved it. 5 stars is not enough. Great read.
Disappointing. Did Grisham just "phone this one in" or were his novels always this formulaic with such cardboard characters? Not at all recommended.
Review of uncorrected eBook file
Finally, after the Bendini, Lambert & Locke debacle, Mitch McDeere and his wife, Abby, are living the life they’d always wanted. He’s a partner in the prestigious Scully & Pershing law firm; she is a cookbook editor. Eight-year-old twin boys, Carter and Clark, make their lives complete. Looking over their shoulders has become a thing of the past.
At the request of Luca Sandroni, Mitch travels to Rome and becomes involved in a dispute between Lannack, a Turkish construction company, and the Libyan government that refuses to pay Lannack for their work constructing a bridge. Luca wants Mitch to handle the case. And he asks Mitch to bring his daughter, Giovanna, from the London office to work with him on the case.
Mitch agrees, but when he arranges a trip into Libya to see the bridge, things go horribly wrong: terrorists kidnap Giovanna and the security team. The two men are brutally murdered; no one knows what’s happened to Giovanna. Will she become another victim of the terrorists?
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Finally, readers of “The Firm” know what has happened to the McDeere family. However, readers who have not read “The Firm” will find sufficient backstory here for “The Exchange” to work well as a standalone.
Mitch and Abby, as well as a plethora of new characters, are well-developed, realistic, and believable. Combined with a strong sense of place and non-stop action, the unfolding narrative keeps readers turning those pages as fast as possible. The story is riveting; the pace, expeditious. Filled with international intrigue, the narrative is ruthless, sinister, and suspenseful. Despite a few gruesome scenes necessary for the telling of the tale, readers are sure to find “The Exchange” both compelling and unputdownable.
Highly recommended.
I received a free copy of this book from Doubleday Books, Doubleday and NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
#TheExchange #NetGalley
Thank you John Grisham, after all these years, for bringing back a sequel to The Firm featuring Mitch and Abby McDeere! A pulse pounding rollercoaster book that puts a new meaning to legal thriller!
I was lucky to read the newest John Grisham. As always it involves lawyers. This time it is international law. Mitch has a good life. He has a family he adores and a job at the largest law firm in New York. The firm has offices all over the world. Mitch is asked to lead a group to handle a case for a bridge to nowhere. The story is intense, in a rough part of the world, and leads to a kidnap. The book is full of intrigue and high drama. Grisham does not disappoint. Another winner for him.
My Thoughts
Abby and Mitch McDeere are leading the kind of life that they always wanted.
Five years after the fallout from law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke Mitch has become a full partner in the law firm of Scully and Pershing in their New York office while Abby is working as an editor of cookbooks.
Living in a beautiful apartment, parents of 8-year-old twin boys and no longer looking over their shoulders like they did for years after barely escaping Memphis 15 years before.
The Firm was and still remains a favorite of mine above all the other books I’ve read by this particular author.
When it was brought to my attention that he had written a follow-up story knew I would read it.
The Exchange encompasses such a large cast that one can be overwhelmed, unless you treat most of them as background noise and focus solely upon how the story itself is being played out.
There are many moments that make it feel like I have reunited with old friends who have never been far from my thoughts but whose lives simply went in such a different direction that we lost touch over the time.
For me enjoyed getting in on how the couple live their lives now, and how easily their very existence can once again be on the line.
The story provides a slow buildup that gets more intense as time goes by until right along with Abby and Mitch readers are given a front row seat to something none of us signed up for.
Be aware that this book contains graphic events more than once that are necessary to the plot as it unfolds but none are easy to read about.
[EArc from Netgalley]
On every book read as soon as it is done and written up for review it is posted on Goodreads and Netgalley, once released then posted on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles as well.
International intrigue forms the core of this new book from John Grisham.It’s a little different from his past books. Mitch McDeere is back.When I started this book I wasn’t very sure where it was headed.There were two storylines I sort of predicted but it went in a completely different direction . It’s not the typical John Grisham legal thriller.
It is a very fast paced book. Was a good read.
Thankyou Netgalley and Doubleday books for this ARC
Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for sending me an ARC of The Exchange in exchange for an honest review. This book is going to be a #1 bestseller, but I’ll predict right now that readers will be largely disappointed, and the critics are going to try to one-up each other with zingers in savage reviews.
I first read The Firm when it came out 30+ years ago. It not only reinvigorated the legal fiction genre, but it was one of those books that broke through into super-popularity, like The Da Vinci Code or Gone Girl. So there was no chance I wasn’t going to read this sequel, but I went into The Exchange with some big questions.
First and foremost, how and why is Mitch McDeere—in 2005, fifteen years after The Firm—a partner at Scully & Pershing, the fictional largest law firm in the world? When we last saw Mitch, he had angered both the FBI and the Mob, fled the US, and most importantly, had stolen $10 million from his law firm. I know Mr. Grisham hasn’t practiced law in a very long time but … they don’t let you be a lawyer after you do those things. There’s an explanation in the book, but it’s pretty unconvincing. It’s best to just suspend your disbelief and move on.
Unfortunately, there isn’t an interesting story being told in The Exchange. Mitch is summoned to the firm’s Rome office to help with a lawsuit against the Libyan government for payment on a $400 million construction contract. While they are in Libya, one of Mitch’s associates, Giovanna, is kidnapped and held for ransom. The rest of the story is about Mitch and the firm’s efforts to pay the ransom for her safe return. In other hands, this story could have been a thrilling tale of spies and soldiers. In Mr. Grisham’s version, there are a lot of lawyers holding a lot of meetings. It’s terribly flat and fairly tedious. Mitch is often just a fly on the wall, and the kidnappers’ decision to use Abby McDeere as a go-between was absurd. There’s one moment where one character starts to wonder about the moral implications of giving terrorists upwards of $100 million simply to save the life of one woman—a fair question, given the terrorists will spend that money on more death and destruction—but after half a page the dilemma is neither resolved nor raised again.
Instead, The Exchange seems to be Mr. Grisham’s unwise attempt to engage in some revisionist history with Mitch McDeere’s character. Mitch in the The Firm is not the greatest guy. For all his genius, he gets duped into working for the Mob. He cheats on his wife and never tells her. And I’ll repeat because it’s important: he angered both the FBI and the Mob, fled the US, and stole $10 million from his law firm. There’s a mini-subplot at the very beginning about Mitch possibly working on a pro bono death penalty appeal in Memphis. There are these hints that’s there’s more to the case, but it goes absolutely nowhere. The subplot was apparently just an excuse for Mitch to have a very awkward lunch with his old co-worker Lamar, so they can sort of talk out their feelings about what happened in and after The Firm. It’s a tiny bit of closure that only Mr. Grisham needed. And like that closure, in retrospect it seems the whole book is about smoothing the edges off of Mitch’s imperfections. Now, he’s a deeply devoted husband and father, and he’s definitely had a change of heart about all of that money he stole.
And just like that, one of Mr. Grisham’s most interesting characters becomes a bland, boring corporate lawyer family guy. I think it would have been better to leave the delightfully flawed Mitch McDeere in the past, and instead focus on a new character who could have maybe tied up the dozen or so loose threads left hanging throughout this story. Not recommended.
My first indication that this was not going to be a similar experience to reading the original novel can came when I read the first 25% and realized absolutely nothing was happening. I came very close to putting the book down.
But, then, things started to pick up, and I was feeling better again. But, the John Grisham of today is clearly not the author, who wrote The Firm all those years ago. This, John Grisham really likes to take his time with everything. We get so much detail about things that absolutely don’t matter, the minutia of the McDeere's daily life, The history of building bridges in Libya, and all manner of other things. But, the way it was paced, you would get something interesting happening, and then all of a sudden things would slow way down in the second you were going to set the book down. It would speed up again.
It was incredibly uneven all the way through. And, I had to force myself to finish it, because I just kept wondering when something interesting was going to happen. And the answer is it didn’t. I got to the end of the book and got to the acknowledgments page and literally said out loud. Are you serious? That’s it? That’s the book I was waiting for?
I think I just feel like it was an exercise in futility. There was nothing about the Mitch McDeere character that felt like he had to be the one involved in this book. It just felt like they were writing it as a Mitch mcdeere follow up because that would maybe make it more successful? Yes, at the beginning, you get a little bit of closing of the loop about things that happened in the first book, but other than that, I really don’t know what the point was.
The Exchange is John Grisham's latest that picks up with Mitch and Abbey from the Firm 15 years later. I enjoyed the first half of the book with their family life and professional life. The central kidnapping story was less compelling to me though there was one time of breathless anticipation. Sadly the ending was a bit abrupt and so it's a mixed bag for me. If you didn't read The Firm definitely read that one first. If you did read The Firm you may enjoy this too.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.
3.5 stars rounding up.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advance ecopy of this title. Grisham has resurrected Mitch from The Firm in this legal thriller set in a high powered NYC law firm. Mitch has been tapped to represent an international company who is suing the corrupt Libyan government. His partner is the daughter of an Italian co-worker. Mitch is poisoned in Libya, but manages to get out. His partner is kidnapped, and all of her handlers/guards are brutally murdered. The terrorist use Mitch's wife, Abby as their point person, and Mitch, Abby, and a select few others travel the globe to try to resolve this kidnapping without further bloodshed.
This title is vintage Graisham: fast-paced plot, fully-drawn characters, and an engaging writing style. I sure would love another book featuring these characters! Highly recxommend.
This was another exciting and action packed read. It was good to see the McDeere family again. I definitely look forward to reading more Grisham
Mitch McDeere, who we last met in the author’s 2nd book, The Firm, is back. Now he was a partner at the NYC headquarters of Scully and Pershing, the largest multinational law firm in the world. Luca, one of his mentors who worked in the Rome office of Scully, asked for Mitch’s help with a case. Luca’s healthy was failing so he could not continue on the case. Lannak, a large Turkish builder, had built a billion dollar bridge for Gadaffi in Libya. Once the work was completed, the Libyans refused to pay Lannak for it.
So Mitch flew to Rome to meet with Luca and go over the case. It was decided that Mitch would go to see the bridge before approaching the Libyan officials. Luca’s daughter, Giovanna, a Scully associate in the London office, accompanied Mitch to Tripoli. The morning after their first meal in Tripoli, Mitch woke up with a severe case of food poisoning. He ended up in a military hospital and Giovanna decided to go alone to see the bridge in an armored truck and several armed guards.
The truck was ambushed, the guards killed and Giovanna was taken hostage. When her captors finally made contact, they demanded $100 million for her safe return. They sent this message via a mystery woman to Abby, Mitch’s wife, on a street in NYC. The captors let Abby know that she and her twin sons were under surveillance. So Mitch and Abby sent their sons to a remote island in Maine where they would be safe with the brother of another Scully partner.
The rest of the book involves attempts to try to raise the money to insure Giovanna’s safe return. Mitch traveled between NY and London and Rome in his attempt to persuade governments to help with the ransom demands.
This book is classic Grisham with suspense and ends with a hint of a sequel in this series. I enjoyed it as I have other books by the author. There are many references to the first book in the series, The Firm, but it is not necessary to read that book to enjoy this one.
I received this ARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.