You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is the first Harlan Coben book I read and at the very start I was warned, by none other than the author, that if this was his first book I was reading I should really stop and pick up a later one. But I didn't - instead I just adjusted my expectations. And sure, there are elements of the book that I can see him cringing at years later - his description of all the women in the book being the most gorgeous ever, the not so great writing style; but despite all of that, I still kept turning the pages and was hooked into the plot! Really looking forward to reading more recent books of his!
challenging
dark
fast-paced
Would be three stars but since the author added a note at the beginning specifically telling people to not read this novel because it isn't his best quality I'm more inclined to be generous. Really this is a good mystery/thriller novel, my only complaint is that it takes a bit longer than necessary to get to the point and then by comparison the ending wraps up really quickly and isn't as clean as I'd like. But overall, a good novel and while Coben introduces a lot of threads he weaves them together well. The characters are all interesting and, even though there's a lot of excess writing here, towards the end I was so invested I couldn't stop reading.
The story was enjoyable and though I had most of it figured out, as well as who the culprit was, there was a twist at the end and felt anti-climatic. FWIW the introduction of the book has the author recognizing that this is one of his first books and long time fans would be slightly disappointed. Overall the story was good, it just felt like it took a LONG time to get there.
This is a newly published early novel by Harlan Coben. Not terrible, but as expected, not up to his later books.
I read this while on vacation and by the time I got home, had to look up the synopsis to remind myself what it was about. If you're new to Coben, I wouldn't recommend it because it will probably put you off all his books (a mistake); and if you are a Coben fan, I wouldn't recommend it because you'll be disappointed. The only good reason to try this would be to satisfy a curiosity about his early writing.
I read this while on vacation and by the time I got home, had to look up the synopsis to remind myself what it was about. If you're new to Coben, I wouldn't recommend it because it will probably put you off all his books (a mistake); and if you are a Coben fan, I wouldn't recommend it because you'll be disappointed. The only good reason to try this would be to satisfy a curiosity about his early writing.
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Struggled to get through this but it was alright. Story was decent
Entertaining, but also sophomoric. He has become a much better write, which is cool to see his progression.
So pleased to have finished this as it was frankly awful. I had it in audio book format so it was hard to skip forward which was a major temptation. There was so much wrong with it - a huge amount of internal introspection by each character at the beginning of each scene, lots of repetition of events within the book seen time and again from multiple perspectives, cheesy and cliched prose. This made the book 30 to 50% longer than it needed to be. The premise was pretty unlikely, every character was brilliant in their own way (beauty, intelligence, wealth, ability etc) so it was hard to connect with them, the direction and conclusion was so heavily signposted the 'twists' were frankly obvious. It was like driving 10 miles down a motorway and being told every 100 yards the turning is coming, painful. As an example of the shallow aspect of this book, a character has a nickname White Lightning. Someone comes into the basketball squad in his place, his nickname White Lightning 2! Argh!!