silverneurotic

I picked up this book a few months ago at a town wide rummage sale for an insanely low price. 

If you thought Mitch McDeere was in trouble in "The Firm," wait
until you meet Kyle McAvoy, "The Associate" 
Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father's small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of "The Yale Law Journal," and his future has limitless potential. 
But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn't want--even though it's a job most law students can only dream about. 
Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed. 
With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains--from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle's "cubicle" at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country--and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.

 

First thoughts: I really enjoy John Grisham's early books. A lot of his more recent books kind of bore me so I was excited to see it compared to a vintage Grisham novel. I had high hopes.

What I liked: I did definitely get the vintage vibe to this book. In a lot of ways, The Associate was a lot like The Firm with a few less bodies. 

What I didn't like: On a shallow note, I felt that this book moved too slowly for my taste. I spent a good part of last weekend reading a bit at a time and it wasn't until Sunday night/Monday morning that I finally reached that point in the novel that it became exciting. So it required a lot of patience that I just did not have last weekend. Then there was the more involved issue I had with Kyle's "big secret" that sets off the events of this novel. As a woman I found it pretty offensive with the way things played out and the mindset of the masculine characters. I found myself wanting the operation to fail and the secret to get out and justice to get served. 

This was an interesting book for me to read, if only because it definitely challenged me. Once I saw where the book was going, I was tempted to stop reading because I was starting to feel offended but I kept reading. Definitely was not my favorite Grisham novel for this very reason but I have to admit that based on a lot of his more recent novels it does have the spark that his older books had. Too bad my enjoyment was compromised.