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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
A bit slow. No where near the moral urgency as A Time To Kill. It's about a will contest - and while there is a twist, it's just not as compelling as other Grisham novels.
Scrappy underdog lawyer takes on big case with surprise twists. Vintage Grisham. Entertaining and a fast paced read.
It had been a couple years since reading ATTK, but the characters quickly came back to me. I always love a book about a court case & thoroughly enjoyed this summer read. Eager to read the third Ford County installment.
I had read A Time to Kill quite some time back. Though Sycamore Row can be treated as a stand-alone, I was under the impression that it’s a continuation of A Time to Kill and loved this chance to pick it up again. There are quite a few returning characters and as such brushing up again would also be a good idea.
Seth Hubbard, a rich businessman, was suffering from Lung Cancer. He decided to make a new will before committing suicide. That shouldn’t raise many eyebrows, except there are a few catches. This new will is handwritten, excludes his family and names Jake Brigance as the executor! Yeah… And the best part is that Seth excluded his family and passed on 90% of his wealth to his black housemaid… Double yeah! While Seth’s family rushes to contest the will, Jake is left to defend the will and its beneficiary; he must also find answers to so many questions – Why was he named as the executor? Why did Seth change his will at the last minute? Why did Seth choose to kill himself on the desolate piece of land known as Sycamore Row? And what did Seth and his brother witness and what effect did that have on the whole situation?
As a backlash of Jake’s previous case, where he successfully defended a black man accused of murder of the white rapists of his ten year old daughter, there is high racial tension in town. So, Seth’s decision to cut out his family for a black housemaid fed to this tension. But Jake Brigance once again handled his case brilliantly and proved to us that he is a character worth having us cheering in his corner. The pace of this novel is somewhat slow. But the 540-something pages are justified in building up the plot in a way so that as readers’ we can feel the tension and the pressure building up. Plus the twists in the end make it totally worth it.
I was feeling quite disappointed with Grisham’s works recently. Though they have their own place, the Theodore Boone series doesn’t really do justice to Grisham’s full potential. Sycamore Row comes just in time to remind us and to bring us a taste of what we were actually missing.
Seth Hubbard, a rich businessman, was suffering from Lung Cancer. He decided to make a new will before committing suicide. That shouldn’t raise many eyebrows, except there are a few catches. This new will is handwritten, excludes his family and names Jake Brigance as the executor! Yeah… And the best part is that Seth excluded his family and passed on 90% of his wealth to his black housemaid… Double yeah! While Seth’s family rushes to contest the will, Jake is left to defend the will and its beneficiary; he must also find answers to so many questions – Why was he named as the executor? Why did Seth change his will at the last minute? Why did Seth choose to kill himself on the desolate piece of land known as Sycamore Row? And what did Seth and his brother witness and what effect did that have on the whole situation?
As a backlash of Jake’s previous case, where he successfully defended a black man accused of murder of the white rapists of his ten year old daughter, there is high racial tension in town. So, Seth’s decision to cut out his family for a black housemaid fed to this tension. But Jake Brigance once again handled his case brilliantly and proved to us that he is a character worth having us cheering in his corner. The pace of this novel is somewhat slow. But the 540-something pages are justified in building up the plot in a way so that as readers’ we can feel the tension and the pressure building up. Plus the twists in the end make it totally worth it.
I was feeling quite disappointed with Grisham’s works recently. Though they have their own place, the Theodore Boone series doesn’t really do justice to Grisham’s full potential. Sycamore Row comes just in time to remind us and to bring us a taste of what we were actually missing.
dark
hopeful
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Have you ever been gone from home for a long period of time (away for college or a semester abroad) and when you return home you find the people & places that you missed are right where you left them and you instantly feel like you fit back into a puzzle that you didn't know you were part of? That's how I felt when I started this book. A Time To Kill has always been my favorite John Grisham book and him coming back around to write a new story with some of the same characters we love from ATTK just brought me home.
I will admit that there are some parts that are boring and slow and full of legal jargon (his books are like this), but that doesn't mean the story is. There is a difference with this vs ATTK (not just the civil vs criminal aspect), but because in ATTK you did not know how it was going to end until the verdict was read. In this one, I started to suspect the "why" a little over half-way through and by the time that the surprise witness showed up, I pretty much knew the "why", I just didn't know how it was going to turn out in the end.
The only thing that kept throwing me off was that ATTK was first published in 1989 (I read it in the mid 90s) and Sycamore Row was published in 2013 (24 years apart) and yet the events of Sycamore Row were only 3 years after the events in ATTK so I had to keep reminding myself that Jake & Co were not 24 years older, but only 3.
I love John Grisham's books that are set around the law and years ago it's what made me want to go to law school, so I understand a lot of the legal terms and can figure out where a case is going over the course of the story. I understand that this will bore other people to tears, but not me and I'll keep reading these as long as he keeps writing them.
I will admit that there are some parts that are boring and slow and full of legal jargon (his books are like this), but that doesn't mean the story is. There is a difference with this vs ATTK (not just the civil vs criminal aspect), but because in ATTK you did not know how it was going to end until the verdict was read. In this one, I started to suspect the "why" a little over half-way through and by the time that the surprise witness showed up, I pretty much knew the "why", I just didn't know how it was going to turn out in the end.
The only thing that kept throwing me off was that ATTK was first published in 1989 (I read it in the mid 90s) and Sycamore Row was published in 2013 (24 years apart) and yet the events of Sycamore Row were only 3 years after the events in ATTK so I had to keep reminding myself that Jake & Co were not 24 years older, but only 3.
I love John Grisham's books that are set around the law and years ago it's what made me want to go to law school, so I understand a lot of the legal terms and can figure out where a case is going over the course of the story. I understand that this will bore other people to tears, but not me and I'll keep reading these as long as he keeps writing them.
So boring. And I can't stand Jake. So much whining. I quit reading before they made it to trial but the lawyering in the first third of the book was terrible at best. The ethics violations are seemingly never ending. Worst book I've started in a long time.