mysteriousbibliophile 's review for:

Six Years by Harlan Coben

4.0

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

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I sat in the back pew and watched the only woman I would ever love marry another man.

This first line is quite the reader hook. Initially, I was concerned the story would have adultery in it (because I’ve had bad experiences of this going into a few stories), but, without spoiling this, my concerns were allayed.
 
Note: This review was supposed to be written and posted a while ago, but somehow I totally forgot, so forgive me if my review isn’t informative enough because of some details I’ve forgotten about.
 
My Review

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed this mystery thriller. The story is very well written from a 1st person narrative as Harland Coben had me mind-boggled as much as the protagonist, and as the main character pieced the confounding mystery together, it all tied together and made sense very, very nicely and handled extremely well. No events felt like scapegoats. It all felt like a natural occurrence for the progress of the plot, with a satisfying conclusion that was pretty tense.

This isn’t predominantly a character driven story, however, I think the primary and secondary characters were crafted believably, rife with motives, history and contrasting personalities. Hence, I would describe this as having a mix of plot and character focus, weighing more on the plot side of the scale. I didn’t like him as a character, but I admired how focused he was in his pursuit of the mystery. In fact, I disliked most, if not all the characters, but that’s mostly my bias towards certain characters that I’d be rooting for more. The villain of the story suited the narrative of the book, but don’t go in thinking it will be highly crafted and developed; it’s closer to a Sauron kind of villain I think, but not unrealistically.

Recommendation/Concluding Thoughts
 
All in all, this was a great listen and I look forward to reading more books by Harlan Coben! I’d recommend the story for mystery, thriller fans for a tense story that seriously has you questioning and wondering a lot with a protagonist who’s driving motive is the love of his life, without this turning into a romance.