A few days ago my husband and I crawled into bed and I decided I would start my new John Grisham book, A Painted House, before falling asleep. I am a John Grisham fan and I always rush out and buy his books as soon as they come out, it is sort of an indulgence for me to pay the price for a hard bound book but I enjoy his storytelling and since it is usually a once/year indulgence I don't mind.  
 
Lying in bed I decided to annoy my husband and I began reading the book aloud. I did this for about 4 minutes with him saying nothing. I then asked if I was bothering him, and he said "Nope, just wondering how long you will keep reading to me." I took that as a challenge to continue and did so for another 5 minutes. When I stopped reading my husband laughed and said "That is the most boring book I have ever heard". I shrugged it off since it was just the beginning. I should have listened to my husband and put the book down.  
 
A Painted House is not a typical legal thriller from John Grisham. Instead this is the tale of Luke Chandler and his family. The story takes place in the 50's and does transport you back to that era. Grisham does a fine job of describing the time. However, in other areas the book just falls flat on its face.  
 
Luke Chandler lives on a cotton farm in Arkansas with his Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa in an unpainted house. Each year during the cotton picking season the family goes into town and selects its help for the season. This year the family selects the Spruills, a family from the hills of Arkansas and a group of Mexicans.  
 
Things are different this time around and right from the beginning the Chandlers don't seem to care for the Spruills but they need the help so they do whatever they can to keep the peace. The Spruills have a son who is a rather large bully and seems to enjoy that. He causes trouble on the farm as well as in town.  
 
I don't want to ruin the story so I will just say that there are some things that happen and Luke seems to bear witness to all of them. This probably is because the child, he is 7, is somewhat of a voyeur. Perhaps it is the boring life on the cotton farm, but the boy just seems to enjoy sneaking around into everyone's business. He sees some things that no child should see and is more or less forced to keep a series of secrets from everyone.  
 
The story starts of slowly, and when I say slowly, I mean very slowly. I don't think there is any action of excitement until around page 70, give or take a few. Grisham really seems to take a lot of time setting the scene and developing the characters. There are authors that neglect to do this but I felt Grisham really took too much time here. I had a hard time getting into the book and at one point found myself thinking things were picking up. I got a little excited that things were looking up only to find out that it really was nothing.  
 
When the story does finally pick up a little bit it is only temporary. Up we go and right back down. I told my husband there is about 30 pages of boring and then about 3 pages of excitement. I found it to be rather annoying. I guess that is my major issue with this book.  
 
I knew when I purchased this book that it was not a legal thriller, but I still hoped for a little bit of mystery, there was none!  
 
The ending is another thing that falls flat. There were so many different roads that this ending could have taken and although the ending was a happy one, it was also a little sad and I felt let down.  
 
I am not impressed with this particular Grisham novel. I feel that Grisham spent too much time on the character development and not enough time making the story exciting for the reader. His description of the 50's seems accurate and readers might enjoy the trip back in time, but that trip doesn't make the book worth reading.  
 
 
 
 
