The Confession by John Grisham

An innocent man is about to be executed.
Only a guilty man can save him.

In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, Travis Boyette abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.
Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man?

I'm a John Grisham fan, ever since I first read A Time to Kill at a very impressionable age so every review of mine on any of John Grisham's books is biased.

What a book! I'm not entirely sure how to review it, though. I definitely enjoyed it, there's a lot of drama and as far as that goes the book does great. When it comes to how accurate all the legal terms and work and anything else law related goes, I have no clue nor do I care very much, I don't go into any fiction book expecting to study something.

As usual, I liked the lawyer, Robbie Flak in this case. I wouldn't describe him as the good guy, but definitely not the bad guy either, he's just very real. I find that John Grisham's characters tend to feel like real people in general and that's one reason why I like his books so much. There's no pretending that this guy is the best, or that one is a complete monster, they are all people with qualities, flaws, and histories. Oh, how I like the histories. Even characters that are not at all relevant to the plot have at least a bit of background. It makes me wonder how does the planning of a book by John Grisham looks like. He says he doesn't like doing research, but he must spend a lot on planning things out.

I can't pick a favourite character, though. I liked Keith, he was maybe one of the best persons in the book. There are quite a lot of characters I didn't like, I would actively avoid being associated with them in any way, but I'm not going to name them. I will say, though, that I found some of these characters' expectations hilarious in a baffling way.

While the novel was entertaining and kept me glued to it, wanting to know what's going to happen next and hoping for the best, it was also very sad. The anticipation and the emotions really got me and I might or might not have shed a few tears. What is more chilling, though, is that the case is inspired by several real cases. Several real cases. Incredible.

I'm not going to go into the themes of the book, they are some of the usual ones in most of John Grisham's books—wrongful conviction, race disparity—and they are also a long conversation.

This was a powerful story, told beautifully. That being said, this was also a disturbing story. So disturbing that there were several times that I had to turn it off because I couldn't handle listening to more of the story at that time.