Good book! I'm a football fanatic, so this book instantly appealed to me. I also live in a small town where the football program is highly anticipated and appreciated much like in this book, (though not to this extreme).

Neely comes back to the small town of Messina out of respect for his high school football coach who is on his death bed. Though Neely expresses and explains his love/hate relationship of the man, he hopes to get the shadow of the man out of his head without giving up all the life lessons that the man instilled in all of his players.

This book is about passion. The coach's passions for his players and his teams. The player's passion for the game of football and desire to impress Coach Rake. Grisham does an incredible job with drawing emotions from the reader.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book and am passing it on to my husband and brother-in-law who is a coach in this small football town. ( )

Maudlin. ( )

I wasn't sure if I would like this book, since it is such a departure from Grisham's law books. I was pleasantly surprised to find it a great read. It is the story of Neely and his love-hate relationship with his high school football coach, who is now dying. ( )

There is no doubt that Bleachers is not your typical John Grisham book. There is no legal intrigue. There are no courtroom heroics. Nobody is murdered. However, there is a good story here. At 163 pages, this book is closer to a novella than to a novel in length. I read the entire story in one day (I know, pretty lame) and it was a fun read. The story revolves around the return of football star Neely Crenshaw to his home town because of the impending death of his football coach Eddie Rake. Coach Rake made himself a town legend, but a controversial legend to be sure. Players from generations of teams migrate back to the field they played on – each for their own reason - to tell stories of their time in the program, both good and bad. Some see Rake as a hero while others can’t shake the man’s obvious flaws. But the real story is Neely trying to come to grips with his relationship with Rake – whether to hate him or respect him and the ‘incident’ kept a secret for 15 years – and the town’s reverence for both Rake and Neely over a ‘silly game.’ The book shines a light on the way sports can become far more than just sport and how people come to grips with their past when they are forced to come back to it. I think Grisham was wise to have written the story as such a short piece. It would have dragged if he attempted to turn it into a 350-page novel. But as it stands, it is a quick, fun read and I really enjoyed characters and the story. ( )

A good shot at literary fiction written by a talented writer of popular fiction. ( )