joshkiba13 's review for:

The Exchange by John Grisham

1.0

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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Yeesh. First of all I found the fact that

Mitch was an immensely successful lawyer in NYC despite all the hassle to escape the country at the climax of The Firm

to be quite unbelievable. Yes, all the criminals had supposedly been jailed, but

that the FBI just stopped caring about the $10mil of dirty money Mitch had swiped

made no sense. It just made for a quick fix at the end of this story with the

hostage exchange.

Unbelievable circumstances aside, the story had so much potential. Mitch is asked to meet with a client on death row and to be his lawyer (exciting!). That client takes his life so . . . instead Mitch goes to the Middle East to settle a lawsuit. He conveniently gets food poisoning and so his partner on the case is kidnapped while he is hospitalized.

*The entire rest of the novel* is people arguing about how to round up $100Mil to save the hostage. It was boring, the characters were dry, and I did not feel at all invested.

Some gripes from the first book have not faded over the years since Grisham published The Firm: Mitch is deemed as this hero of the story, but

his wife is the one who was in contact with the kidnappers and the one who traveled to Africa to rescue the hostage

. Women are objectified yet again (the poor fellow was sick in the hospital, but at least the nurses had nice short skirts), and did Mitch ever tell his wife about

that affair in the Caymans from book one

? Nope, he never even thought about it, even when revisiting the islands. 

I've heard so many great things about Grisham's books, so I won't give up on him yet. But if a third book is published starring Mitch McDeere, I will not be reading it hehe