Simon Latch is a small-town Lawyer in Virginia. While not what you would call a lucrative practice, Simon scrapes by while going through a divorce and trying to maintain a civil relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife, mainly for the sake of their two children.
Enter Eleanor Barnett, an elderly woman whose husband has recently passed, leaving her with a fortune that she wants to be certain is not left in the wrong hands. She has no family she cares to speak of, no close friends, and no charities she wants to give a windfall. She has a will, but is not happy with it or the lawyer who wrote it, and is looking for someone new to assist her with her many assets.
Simon can not believe his luck and has visions of dollar signs and a future without financial struggles as he takes her on as a client and finalizes the new will with a hopefully undetectable small print provision to himself as well.
When Eleanor is hospitalized after a car accident and subsequently dies under mysterious circumstances, Simon finds himself accused of murder. Simon admittedly is many things – but a killer is not one of them. To clear his name, Simon must race against time to uncover the truth of what happened to Eleanor before he is put away for life.

Ahhh…. Grisham. It’s like opening the window for the first time in the spring. What a nice revisit of this author.
If you follow my reviews, you will see I have been quite heavy in recent years on the psychological thrillers – loving the chase… loving the twists – and loving the wild ride. While always a fan of a good mystery, it seems like I have not dug into this genre as much as I used to.

Enter this book, The Widow. I was looking for a good audio to listen to while going about my day-to-day ( cooking, cleaning, car time…), and this one caught my eye. I’m so glad I chose it.
The Widow has a nice pace to it. I liked the more focused and detailed style of Grisham that didn’t have so many moving pieces and characters to follow. He really nailed it on the small-town feel in the setting as well as in the characters.

The narrator, Michael Beck, had the perfect voice for this book – he totally felt like Simon to me and was wonderful at changing it up to distinguish between the other characters.

The storyline flowed nicely, I enjoyed our protagonist, Simon, and found him to be real… while not perfect – he was not a killer and gathering the pieces along the way, let me as the listener, take part in solving the crime. While I did not love the ending ( a little out of nowhere IMO, to the point I had to Google to explain it to me) it was still a delicious listen. And now… I kind of want to try my hand at Ginger Cookies. ;P
Grisham? Still relevant.

Rated: 3 out of 5
Read Author Before: yes
Read Author Again: probably

Book Club Worthy – yes, definitely some things to unpack here – themes of integrity, trust, and more could lead to a good discussion.