Hold Tight by Harlan Coben Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $0.15 You Save: $26.80 (99%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Hold Tight
Book Review: A thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
A thriller!! I kept imagining my grandchildrens' reaction if they were
confronted with a similar situation, and hoping their parents had forwarned them about this. I truly identified with the characters.
Book Review: AWESOME!
Summary: 5 Stars
Hold Tight This is one of Harlan Coben's best books ever.It grabs you in the first chapter and doesn't let you go until the end. Harlan is the master of bringing loose ends together with a bang. And he can write a fight scene like no one else can. When I was done with this book I wanted to start reading it all over. Yes it was that good, no it was that great!Book Review: Ahh the Happy Suburbs
Summary: 4 Stars
Think about all the worst things that can happen in an upper class suburban neighborhood and throw in some high tech computer stuff, stir it around, turn it into a mystery and you have "Hold Tight". In this piece of surburbia, there is teen suicide, teen runaway, teen drugs, teenager dying in need of a transplant, teachers abusive to students, students taking revenge, parents trying to protect their teens and a murder or two. Of course, the parents are trying to figure it all out. There are several, as you can tell by the above list, strands to this mystery. At the beginning and in the middle are two gruesome murders. It is not until the end, however, when all the strands come together to form a coherent rope. Frankly, the murders were almost superfluous. The book would have worked just as well without them.
Coben is the master of NJ suburban mysteries. He captures the flavor and personalities in suburbia well. To make this novel work, he has to have every family suffer some tragedy, so it gets a bit depressing after a while. It also took a long time for all the disparate story-lines to begin to come together. Once they did, though, it was hold onto your horses suspenseful.
The characters are all realistic and very good. Like any neighborhood, there are some more likeable than others and some who offer more to the telling than others. The leading parents are especially good as they agonize over issues of their child's privacy versus his safety - a major theme of the book. The issues are steeped in the brave new world of every day consumer technology - the things we can do with phones and computers! These and other issues are touched upon such that this is a rare mystery that could make good reading club fodder.
As noted, this book can be depressing at times - isn't any family in tact and functional? Those who first fell in love with Coben's humor in the Myron Bolivar novels will be disappointed. There is no humor here. However, for those looking for a thought-provoking novel that engages issues of parenting and tecnology wrapped in a mystery, this is the book.
Book Review: Always Got to Hold On Tight to Coben's Books, There's Always Someone Waiting to Start Reading as Soon as You Put Them Down
Summary: 4 Stars
Hold Tight is certainly very different to Coben's previous independent storyline novels which may immediately put off some fans. With Hold Tight Coben gives the reader a lot of simultaneous storylines running parallel. Unfortunately most of the adult female characters are pretty similar so it becomes a bit confusing at the start of a chapter or paragraph when Hold Tight switches storylines to know straight away which characters eyes you are looking through. Saying that though its not that long before you realise who it is and which storyline you are in again. All storylines which incidentally cross paths at one time or another. While not as good as Coben's masterpieces this will still please most fans of his work.
The most prominent storyline and one marketed on the back of the book revolves around overprotective parents Tia and Mike Baye who scared that their son Adam may follow in his friends footsteps and commit suicide decide they have to ignore the moral right of their son to his privacy and install a program on his computer so they can read every one of his e-mails and see which websites he visited. They start to freak out when Adam receives a message if he stays quiet he will be safe. When they learn of a drugs and alcohol party invite they decide to be clever in stopping Adam from going so he won't know they spy on him. Adam however stills bails on their plans and as they try and suttley work out a way to get him back they learn he has greater plans than just getting high and drunk, when they try and stop him he disapears and his friends and everyone can't help the frantic parents locate him.
Meanwhile an angry but wussy father wants retribution for his daughter whose life a teacher has made hell by pointing out her moustache. The mother of the suicide victim finds evidence her son was not alone on the roof the day he died. A couple also is on a violent rampage killing suburban housewives which will test a female homicide detective's ability to control her resentul of her promotion longer serving male officers who want to undermine her the first chance they get.
Book Review: An Engrossing and Thrilling Work From Coben,,,Again!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have to admire Harlan Coben. His books are nearly identical in their layout and basic story structure, yet each story is unique and independent and consists of its own plot twists and turns. Hold Tight does a great job of following the usual Coben plot twist of starting with several seemingly unrelated stories and weaving them together into one cohesive conclusion.
Along the way the reader is following along trying to guess what the next plot twist or turn will be and trying to anticipate if this action or that one is significant or not. I end up giving this book 4 stars only because I found that the author wrapped up the ending a bit to quickly and neatly this time and as a result found it a bit to perfect and neat. Otherwise I highly recommend this book!