John Grisham is not exactly a secret name in fiction. Everyone else seemed to know him before I did. I was late to him, properly late. I only picked him up with Camino Island, on this damp Melbourne evening where the backyard smelled like wet dirt, smoke, and the neighbour’s Indian curry drifting over the fence. I had just finished a shift I hated and my feet were sore from standing all day. 

I remember standing there, drizzle starting, lighter in one hand and the book in the other, wondering if I should make noodles, have a smoke, or just go straight to bed. That was the first time I “met” Grisham, and it felt a bit off, like walking into a party halfway through the night when everyone is already half drunk and laughing about stories you were not even there for.

At first, honestly, I did not like him. The pages felt slow. He kept circling, coming back to the same bit again like he had forgotten he had already told me. The repetition got on my nerves. I remember reading on the tram one morning, half asleep, thinking, why are we still talking about this scene, why are we still here? 

But I kept going anyway because I had already paid for the book and I did not have another one in my bag and I am stubborn like that. At some point I stopped counting the loops and just let him talk. It started to feel less like a mistake and more like listening to a mate who rambles after a couple of beers and you just let him, because that is how he is and he is not going to change for you.

Reading The Widow felt like meeting that same mate again, just older and carrying heavier stuff around under his eyes. The book stays in small places: little offices that smell like dust and old paper, phones ringing when it is still basically night, streets where everyone has known everyone for too long and still pretend they do not gossip. It reminded me a bit of the suburb I grew up in, where everyone knew who your parents were and what you did in Year 9 and never really let it go. The lawyer in the middle is not some shiny city hero. He is tired. A bloke in a plain office trying to keep the lights on, shuffling bills and doing small deals with himself about what is still okay and what he will “fix later”. The first compromises are tiny. You can almost hear the excuses in his head, and that is why you want to watch what he will do next.

The widow never turns into one clear person in your mind. One moment you feel sorry for her, the next something tightens and you are not sure if you should trust her at all. Her loneliness feels heavier than whatever “plot” is going on. You can almost see her walking circles in her house, doing the same chores, hanging onto the same memories because there is nothing new coming in. It reminded me of visiting an older relative once, sitting at their kitchen table while they told the same story twice in an hour and pretended they had not. The book does not blast her story at you. It leaks it out in bits, like you are catching half conversations from another room. After a while it is like you are stuck at her table with a weak coffee, watching her worry, not quite knowing what to say or when you are allowed to stand up and leave.

What surprised me was where the tension comes from. Not big stuff. Just little things. A phone call at the worst possible time. Someone asking for money again when there is not any and you are already behind. A visit that runs long and turns awkward and no one knows how to end it properly. It felt close to that jolt when your own phone buzzes with a “we need to talk” message and your stomach just drops. There are no explosions, no car chases, no dramatic gun pulled out at the last second. The danger seeps in through normal days. The lawyer’s flaws make it worse. He is not evil; he is worn down, tempted, lazy about his own lines in the sand. It made me think of that idea that you build your life out of small choices, the ones you keep saying do not count, and then one day you wake up and realise this is it, this is who you became, and it is on you.

For me that is usually a good sign with a book, when you forget to be clever about it and just start reacting. You get annoyed with the characters, or you feel a bit protective, and that means something has landed past the brain and into your gut. Grisham’s pacing is still very much Grisham: slow, circling, staying too long in scenes where a tighter writer would have left ages ago. When I was younger, that would have driven me mad. With The Widow it somehow fit. The repetition feels like small town life: days piling up, one looking exactly like the next until you are not sure what day it is without checking your phone. The same worries come back every morning, a little changed, and the book’s shape copies that stuck feeling in your chest when you wake up and nothing much has shifted.

When I put it down, I got this echo of that first Melbourne evening with Camino Island. Clothes smelling a bit like smoke, a bit of damp in my bones, someone else’s problems still buzzing in my brain while I stood in the kitchen wondering whether to make tea or pour a drink. For me, that is the sort of book worth sitting with, even if it never blows your mind. If I had to pin it down, I would still call it three stars out of five.