Hold Tight
by Harlan Coben
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Book Reviews of Hold Tight
Book Review: Complex Suspense Novel With Plenty of Heart
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoy Harlan Coben's work a lot. I've been reading him for years. The Myron Bolitar novels remind me a lot of Robert B. Parker's Spenser series, and I love Myron's sidekick, Win - one of the deadliest, coldest guys in the room.
When Coben shelved the Bolitar series, temporarily, and started doing the stand-alone thrillers, I wasn't too keen on the idea. However, TELL NO ONE made an instant believer of me and introduced me to another side of the author's bag of tricks. Nobody writes thrillers like Coben does.
Except Coben himself. He's written other novels in a similar vein, all with vicious little twists. Which is a problem only if you've gotten to looking for those twists and have stopped believing in what the author is doing. Most of those plot zingers require the reader to not be looking for them. Admittedly, I have been.
But just when I'd become wary of Coben's writing style and got harder to fool, he changes his writing yet again in HOLD TIGHT. Coben dives deeply into the parental pool in this novel, bringing up and discussing all the myriad questions parents have to deal with on a daily basis when it comes to protecting and guiding children. How much supervision is too much? How much is too little? How does a parent control what information a child receives about sex, drugs, and rock and roll when that information is out there on the street? And next door?
Coben is a caring parent. I understood that by reading between the lines. His previous books show that as well. I met him once at a BoucherCon. He's an entertaining and giving guy, the kind of author readers love to meet.
During the course of the novel, Coben also takes his readers on a tour de force of the software that's available out there to help watch over your child. I have to admit, I thought a lot of it was really invasive and would never do it. However, just how far would you go as a parent to protect your child? That question keeps bouncing back through the frantic course of the novel. Every time I thought I had an answer, Coben threw something else at me till I didn't know what I would do.
Much of the action centers around the Baye family. Mike and Tia are a doctor and lawyer respectively. They're educated and caring people. However, their teenage son has become something of a concern to them: he's moody and withdrawn. Compounding those normal worries that plague parents through a child's adolescence is the fact that Adam's best friend recently committed suicide. Mike and Tia are understandably concerned.
As a result of the breakdown in communication, Tia talks Mike into putting spyware on Adam's computer. That eventually triggers a landslide of no-return regarding their relationships. Adam goes missing, and the parents frantically try to find him. That same night, Mike is beaten and almost killed in an alley while trying to follow the son of a local policeman and one of Adam's school buddies.
But that's just the main plot. Coben introduces a lot of other characters with equally compelling storylines, and none of them seem to really touch on each other. When they do, and Coben pulls them together nicely, it's amazing how much a community actually impinges on each other without knowing it - especially when they have kids.
I was dazzled by the intricacy of the plot in the end, but I literally had to keep a scorecard to remember who was doing what to whom. Coben is an excellent writer when building character, but there were just so many of them in this novel that I felt overwhelmed at times.
HOLD TIGHT is an excellent novel, though. It provides sleek writing that will take you out of your everyday world (though by exposing you to your worst fears if you're a parent), thought-provoking subtext, and a story that will impact you for a long time afterwards. This is one you're going to want to read, think about, and talk to other readers about.
Book Review: HOLD TIGHT reveals the depth of his talent
Summary: 5 Stars
Harlan Coben has had a remarkable run since 2001, when TELL NO ONE increased his already considerable army of readers one hundredfold. He has sustained, even increased, his presence on a multitude of must-read lists since then. Even casual readers, folks who don't necessarily pay close attention to what has just been published, keep an eye out for a new Coben title.
However, neither those who have been with Coben since DEAL BREAKERS nor those who have jumped on the train in this century are going to be prepared for HOLD TIGHT, his latest and best title. The primary focus of his most recent books has been the "family thriller," and accurately so. HOLD TIGHT does not abandon that theme but rather expands it, taking it to the next level or two. The result is a work that is compelling and memorable, one that you won't forget anytime soon.
What Coben does, and quite expertly, is get a few plot plates spinning on different sticks and then slowly and improbably, but credibly, brings them all together. The major plot deals with Mike and Tia Baye. Mike is a transplant surgeon, one of the best there is at what he does. Tia is an up-and-coming defense attorney in a major law firm. They are the parents of 16-year-old Adam and tween Jill. Adam is becoming a concern. Following the suicide of his best friend, Adam, a former high school hockey star, has hung up his skates, is withdrawing and becoming more secretive about his activities.
His parents, after some soul-searching, begin spying on him, 21st century-style. They install software on his computer that records and reports everything he sees and sends. They check his whereabouts via a GPS sender located in his cell phone. Adam appears to be involved with people who are way out of the Bayes' league, who have an interest in him and aren't about to relinquish it easily, and who have an unexpected hold on Mike that could cause him to lose everything.
At the same time, Mike has a problem with a patient, a young boy in dire need of a kidney transplant. The normal source for a donor isn't open to her, for reasons, Mike soon discovers, that cannot be revealed. And at the same time, a mysterious and psychotic killer --- a man we know only as Nash --- is roaming the area, murdering women seemingly at random who are somehow interconnected with each other. And Nash? He is motivated by...love. And protection. There are connections between the Bayes, Nash and a young girl, connections that aren't fully revealed until the very end of HOLD TIGHT and that will resonate long after your reading is done.
Harlan Coben is a marvel. HOLD TIGHT reveals the depth of his talent, which is as good as his past work has been. This is one of those rare books that deserves to be read at least twice: once to let yourself be carried along, and once to see just how the author pulled it off. Draw the blinds, turn off the cell and barricade the doors. You do not want to be interrupted while you read this one.
Book Review: A gallant attempt by Coben falls just a little short
Summary: 2 Stars
First of all, I have always enjoyed Coben's work and I also feel that just about every one of his stories falls short of what it could have been. Coben seems to have a very powerful positive gene that forces his stories to be created with great moral characters and purpose. It is impossible to pick up one of his novels and not feel as though you are drowning in the most all American family you will ever come across. Coben also has a fault in my mind for getting way too attached to his characters. Myron Bolitar, his primary alter ego for example was slowly transformed into a comic book super hero, and the further the series progressed, the further Coben became attached to the character, and the further the character lost any semblance to reality.
What makes Coben's stand alone novels such as `Hold Tight' more engaging than his Bolitar series is that he has no real attachment to the characters and you are left with the idea that something bad just might happen. Characterization is not a primary concern of Coben, from one book to the next; the protagonist is pretty much the same. Here as with his other stories, you find a man with no real flaws other than being blinded to his everyday life due to pressing work concerns... the normal everyday life disassociation effect. But you don't read Coben for great characters, you read him for the action that he occasionally pulls off with great success.
So I am primarily giving this book two stars not based on the 2 dimensional characters, not based on the better than average but not great prose style, but on the plot. I have to hand it to Coben here. He really goes for his greatest triumph with this book. The plot is totally complex, original, and interwoven. You follow a dozen or more characters over the course of two days and it fits together fairly decently. A lot of the threads felt underdeveloped or utilized, but this was a stretch for Coben and I appreciate that. On the down side, there were so many characters and the story jumped so often, I had to take a moment time and again to remind myself just who and what this or that person were and what they were last doing. The story also added weakly, Coben had so many threads, you could see him trying to wrap up maybe three dozen of them over the last few chapters and only a couple felt complete.
I like Coben a lot; I will read him again and again as his new books come out. I don't think that this was his most successful effort. I think he gave it a good try. I hope he broadens his scope even more with the next one and pulls it off.
Book Review: Another great thriller by Coben!
Summary: 4 Stars
HOLD TIGHT is another great thriller from one of the best in the business, Harlan Coben. I've read all of Coben's recent work and but only two Bolitar novels. I'm an aspiring novelist, and Coben is one of the few authors that truly inspires me. I love the feeling and emotion he instills into a story. His novels follow a familiar formula. A good man is thrust into some incredible circumstances where his life is turned upside down. The hero always prevails in the end, usually after living through some incredible twists in turns.
In HOLD TIGHT, Coben has taken a slightly different approach. The complex plot revolves around a group of families living in the same neighborhood. They all have their own problems and as the plot unravels, the problems of the families come together, resulting in an exciting climax.
Mike and Tia Baye are concerned about their son Adam. He's changed since his friend Spencer's suicide. Mike is distraught that the once greate relationship he had with his son is unraveling. They decide to install software that will allow them to spy on Adam's every move. These leads them to areas they could never imagine. Susan Lorriman is the Baye's next door neighbor. She is beautiful but holds a dark secret. She is also fighting to save the life of her [...], who needs a kidney transplant.
In a photo memorial for Spenser, his mom Betsy Hill discovers a picture that indicates she might not actually know everything about the night Spenser died. She does some digging and finds out Adam might know more that he is letting on. Then there is Guy Novak, the single dad who is trying to help is daughter recover from a devestating insult hurled by her fifth grade teacher.
To top the plot off, there is a pair of crazy demented souls kidnapping women and killing them. The women also live in the neighborhood.
HOLD TIGHT is a really good book, but it is defnitely not one of Coben's best. I applaud his effort to create more of an ensemble novel that spans a short time period. The characters work, no problem there. The problem lies in the plot twists. It is believable for Coben's crazy plots to happen to one person. Here, he takes just as many crazy plot twists, has them all happen to separate families, yet ties them all together in the end. There were just a few too many coincidences to be believable. Still, that doesn't change the enthusiasm I had for this novel. Coben is at the top of his game and has once again written a great thriller.
Book Review: Wildly convoluted fun
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm a big fan of Harlan Corben, although like many of us, I was starting to think he'd fallen into a rut, relying on the same plot devise too often. True, Promise Me also centers on the disappearance of a suburban teenager, but at least Hold Tight isn't a retread of the `suburban professional's life is turned upside down when he finds out that his wife/sister/brother may not actually be dead' story line.
Coben's novels remind me, in a strange way, of the wildly convoluted `who-dun-its' of the 1930's; murder mysteries that were ingeniously preposterous. Coben delivers complicated stories riddled with so many sub-plots, mysterious motives, and incredible coincidences that it would make Hercule Poirot's egg-shaped head spin.
Coben's novels rival anything Christie wrote when it comes to `complexity of plot', but his novels are a far cry from the stuffy detective novels of that earlier era. What Coben captures, is the spirit of the game. Coben's characters are game pieces in an elaborate puzzle. The fun in reading the novel is trying to anticipate all the unlikely twists and turns.
The downside is that Coben seems to put more energy into the `set up' and less into the resolution of his novels. Sometimes he gets so carried away with twists and turns that his novels don't make sense anymore. In this case, I found that he wrapped things up a little hastily, as if he'd reached a required page count and then felt he needed to 'wrap things up' as quickly as possible. I was also not completely convinced that all the pieces fit together perfectly.
The bottom line: Hold Tight, like all of Coben's novels, is compulsively readable. It's almost impossible to finish one chapter and not immediately start reading the next. Some reviewers have complained about the multiple converging storylines and the challenges of keeping track of such a large cast of characters. I didn't find that to be a problem for me (must be all those years reading Agatha Christie novels - although Christie usually provided a list of characters for reference at the front of her novels). While character development is hardly Coben's forte, Hold Tight manages to explore a number of interesting issues about parenting and technology.
Fans of the author will enjoy this novel, and chances are Hold Tight will garner Coben new fans as well. Hold Tight is ingeniously clever, wildly convoluted fun.