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Hold Tight

Author: Harlan Coben
Publisher: Orion
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

18 reviews
Sales Rank: 1117

Media: Hardcover
Edition: Hardback
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6

ISBN: 0752885219
EAN: 9780752885216
ASIN: 0752885219

Publication Date: April 17, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Accidentially bought two - this is the unread one...

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 18

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Brilliant! May 23, 2008
I'm not a fan of Harlan's Myron novels but his stand-alones are great. Hold Tight is his best novel to date. Absolutely loved it! Expertly written, brilliantly crafted. I did wonder how Nash and his partner could possibly tie in with the main story and the fact that Harlan had me wondering that in the first place is great suspense. Well done, Harlan!

5 out of 5 stars

Tell No One!!! Tell everyone ..Hold Tight one of Harlan's best May 8, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

Whilst I count myself a real Myron (and especially a Wynn fan) I thought Hold Tight was a brilliantly crafted book. Other reviewers have gone in to the nuts and bolts of the plot so thats all well covered. What I will say is I usually read 2-3 chapters a night, Hold Tight I did not put down until I had finished the book. Great story Harlan . . . Thanks

4 out of 5 stars

Solid Coben May 6, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Mr Coben writes real page turners with a sting in the tale, but of late the themes seemed to be the same - something happened in the past and it comes back to haunt someone. But here he takes an interesting theme about parents and children and spins in a multi-layered story that unravels in a way that will make you read 'just one more chapter'. For fun he throws in some characters we have met before but this is classic Coben. There were one or two elements I guessed (including the final twist) but for me this gets the four stars because it is a real page turner and when it is over you regret the wait until the next one.

3 out of 5 stars

A slight dip in form.. May 6, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Now, I love Coben's style. All of his stand-alone thillers have been outstanding. Very deep and complex, dealing with topical issues and moving at breakneck speed. His pose flows, his dialogue is great and his characters are all well-rounded and believable enough for the genre.

The Woods (Cobens last effort back in 2007) was, in my opinion, the best of the lot, and I was really looking forward to him ratcheting it up with Hold Tight. Unfortunately, it just doesn't happen. The prose, dialogue, characetrs etc are all briliant, and as an example of the storytellers art, Hold Tight is very polished indeed.

However, it just doesn't have the thrills that we've come to expect from Coben. The plot is a simple workthrough, more like a procedural pot boiler that the typical Coben switchbacks and false trails. Usually, I get 100 pages into a Coben and wonder what the Hell is going on. With Hold Tight, I had a definite idea of where he was heading. There were no big surprises and no cliffhanging endings to scenes. Usually you're hooked from the first paragraph, but this is a relatively sedate opening until the real inciting force of the story....

This is a good book, but it won't blow your blood pressure through the roof like Tell No One, The Innocent, etc. It's Coben-lite! If you're a Coben fan, you'll be happy to buy it, but if you're coming new to the author, I'd start with the earlier stand alones.

Three stars for a well-written and decent, if unspectacular story.

3 out of 5 stars

A satisfyingly complex jigsaw May 6, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Harlan Coben specialises in writing intricate and suspenseful mysteries that keep you turning pages late into the night. His first (and to my mind, his best) standalone murder mystery was "Tell No One". Since then he has written several more mysteries which felt increasingly similar in plot. I was pleasantly surprised that "Hold Tight" marks a departure in formula, in that it doesn't kick off with an ancient murder case or long ago disappearance. While this does mean that the book struggles a little to find its own momentum, at least Coben is trying something different instead of giving us more of the same.

"Hold Tight" juggles a number of different stories, all of which in some way centre on the theme of parents trying to protect and/or understand their children. While initially they seem to be quite disparate plotlines, eventually the connections between them become apparent and it is this process of putting the jigsaw pieces together that is the most satisfying part of reading "Hold Tight". One of the things that I really like about Harlan Coben's writing is that there are never any loose ends or things that get left unexplained.

"Hold Tight" is a little slower in pace than his other novels and at times it gets confusing keeping track of so many people, but it's still is a satisfying mystery that keeps the suspense going until the final pages.