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Oct 13, 2017deebitner rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
This is one of those times where I remember that I am just not the audience for mainstream novels. This is a perfectly serviceable tale. Samantha is a lawyer at a prestigious New York law firm - right up until the housing crash. She's driven to maintain her life as it is, but she's not particularly driven in any other way. Samantha is a child of two other lawyers, and neither of them (a government employee and a former ambulance-chaser trial lawyer, disbarred) inspire her a lot. She's laid off, but given the option of working for free at a nonprofit somewhere and finds herself in Appalachia. Suddenly she's thrown from paperwork and research into dealing face to face with poor people who are being thrown out of their houses and the coal barons' lawyers who are destroying the environment. It's not a secret where Grisham's sympathies lie. Nor is it a surprise at any point in the novel. Literally nothing that happens is a shock. It's well-crafted, but it's like a tape measure: as it unrolls, you know what's coming next. Every pin is set up to be knocked down. You know X character(s) is/are going to die. You know what Samantha will end up doing in the end. You know who is going to end up as the love interest. It's all by the numbers. I asked on Facebook what people see in this author. The responses were "Predictability" and "I liked his early stuff." And I can see that! I have no quibble with the way it's set up, but I could have wished for at least one surprise, and more showing and less telling. Three of five stars, because wow, I can see the talent... but it's not what I'm looking for.