What readers think of The Summons, plus links to write your own review.

John Grisham’s The Summons is an awful book that has only a few characters but and they are played horribly in the book. Unlike most of his books, this book is one of the books that I would not recommend anyone to read. The book starts very slow, but when it does get back to its fast paced Grisham speed, it slowly dies away. The Summons has a very weak plot, virtually no character development and almost no atmosphere in the plot. The best thing about the book is that it’s a short and easy read - so one doesn’t waste ones time for too long.
Readers can predict the book very early on and it does not make any late twists that the readers are used to in Grisham’s writing. The story starts slowly and then builds to ...well, nothing, actually. It’s a very poorly written book that has a slow introduction; weak plot building, and even weaker ending.
This book has absolutely no resemblance to The Runaway Jury. The Runaway Jury was a thriller, and this one is simply not. The Runaway Jury has complex characters that were well created and played in the book. The characters in The Summons are very poorly created and are played just as poorly. The plot of The Runaway Jury is unmatchable, which the plot of The Summons is feeble and dead even before it begins. The problem is that The Runaway Jury tied up all the leads after giving you enough clues and had an excellent twist. Sadly this story does neither. The ending in The Runaway Jury was very hard to predict, while the ending of The Summons was the only ending that it could have. No twists or pulled strings could have changed the ending in any way.
It is now the Grisham name that sells books and not the content. I cannot help but feel that if this was a first time book by an unknown author that it would not have been published. This book promises much, but delivers very little. With out question this is the worst John Grisham book that I have read, and him having two years to write this, he did a very, very embarrassing job.

I found the begining of the book really slow for at least the first 100 pages or more then in the middle it started to pick up and it got really strong. It started to fade a bit but I thought it had a pretty strong finish

it started off great, with the right amount of suspense, but the ending ruined it. The story had a lot of potential, too bad those possibilities were never explored.

i liked the book at first but it did not deliver the ending i had hoped. I love reading Grisham's novels and have in fact read many and this was no where near as good as some of his others.

a story so poorly conceived and constructed that one wonders what happened to the former fascinating story-teller of his workaholic days!

Dull compared to Grisham's previous works.

Not of the money I paid for the book, although that would be great too, but mostly of the completely wasted hours I spent reading it.

It took about two chapters to figure out who the "bad guy" was, if that, and the side trails followed were somehow both boring and utter fantasy. Totally unbelievable characters, including Harry Rex (who has somehow undergone a personality transplant since his last appearance) to the King of Torts (are we really supposed to believe that a LAWYER is going to sit around admitting to dozens of felonies during an overnight visit with a total stranger?). And we are also supposed to believe that a lifelong junkie, who has stooped to murdering his own father, forging a will, threatening and intimidating his brother, arson, and God knows what else) comes into three million dollars, and uses it to check himself into long term rehab? Oh, puh-leeze. Perhaps Grisham should write a couple of novels about Santa and the Easter Bunny.

As for the ending, it is one of the worst literary cop-outs I have ever come across. Nothing resolved, characters taking off on tangents that bear no resemblance whatsoever to their own personalities as set up by the entire novel, and "see you in a year."

This just proves that once an author has reached a certain point in sales, their publishers will print any doddle they type up without bothering to read it first. Complete garbage.

IT SEEMS TO BE A BORING BOOK, BECAUSE IT IS NOT A DIRECT BOOOK IT DOESNT SPECIFY THINGS.