The Innocent by Harlan Coben Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Innocent
Book Review: Book review of The innocentby Harlan Coban
Summary: 4 Stars
This was my first contact with the writing of Mr. Coban, and I started reading the prologue while walking from my mailbox, into the kitchen and on to my favorite chair without lifting my eyes from the pages. The book was fast paced, interesting and had a thousand quirks and turns. I felt sorry for the protaganist, wished him luck and was happy with the final outcome. It was a book I could not put down until I turned the final page.Book Review: Coben does it agan!
Summary: 4 Stars
This was my third Coben adventure, and the author is batting a thousand. I enjoyed this whopper of a suspense novel a lot. Theres a huge cast of well-developed characters, and youll keep guessing right to the end.
So why didnt i give it 5 stars? Few reasons: First there was almost a phone-book's amount of characters. I kept up with it for the most part, but i think som people would need a notepad as they kept reading. Second, the plot does get quite involved, ergo the handy notepad needed. And finally, the epilogue made me laugh. Too much of a coincidence, even for fiction.
Still not a bad novel though.
Book Review: Coben is addicting!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you don't want to get addicted to Coben's fast and often funny mysteries, don't buy this great read. The term page-turner could've been coined for this author!Book Review: Coben's Autobiography: "How I Beat a Dead Horse and Got Rich"
Summary: 3 Stars
I love Coben, I really do: Tell No One proved formative in my decision to write genre fiction. I've proceeded to gobble up every stand-alone since Tell, but by the time I finished No Second Chance, his third stand-alone, I noticed Coben had employed THE VERY SAME TWIST IN EACH BOOK. Tell No One, Gone For Good, No Second Chance, Just One Look--the big mystery behind each pivoted on the same identical fulcrum. I wondered: "Will he ever try something new?"
Enter The Innocent. I prayed and begged the gods of genre fiction that Coben had learned to flex his creative muscles. I bequeathed them burnt offerings as an intercession on Coben's behalf, that they would let the scales fall from his eyes and grow him to be more than a one-trick pony. Please, I wailed, please let The Innocent be different! No more of the same!
But the gods must hate me.
The Innocent has at its core the same schtick peddled in previous Coben stories which, for the sake of not spoiling your own reading, will not be mentioned in this review. The story had the twists and turns Coben's fans have come to expect, but in the end it seems he's grown quite content to re-gift the same gimmick to us time and again. Not only that, but The Innocent was his second most sloppily-written work behind Just One Look. His description resorts yet again to little more than telling as opposed to showing. The characters are better drawn here than in Look, the ever-present info-dump still frustrates--albeit not as madly as in Look--and the dialogue continues to be embellished and redundant. Furthermore, instances exist when the story FEELS like it's moving forward, but ends up staying in one place till the next chapter or the one after that. Comparatively speaking, Innocent was a welcome semi-return to form after Just One Look (a putrid piece of fiction). It doesn't stand up to Tell, Gone, or even Chance, or even most of the Bolitar series, but thank the fiction gods that at least we don't have to put up with Just One Look II: The Sideways Glance.
The message seems to be, "I'm Harlan Coben, I can take you for a ride, so I can grow lax in the areas not concerned with plot." He's since returned to his Bolitar series, and for that we can only hope his schtick has at last come to an end. Read this after Tell, Gone, and Chance (in that order), and skip Look. Be prepared, however, that the more you read his stand-alones the more you'll get the same ol' again and again.
Book Review: Comfortable Reading Edition / Shocking Story
Summary: 4 Stars
This paperback was designed for comfortable reading, which it was with it's larger print. With my aging eyes, I really liked that. The story itself was far from comfortable. Matt Hunter has been out of prison for a few years now; long enough to fall in love, get married, his wife is pregnant, and he is a well paid paralegal with a law degree. Then it all starts to fall apart when he gets a call from his wife's cell phone with a video of her in a motel room with another man. Then a nun who was just murdered had placed a 6 minuete phone call to his sister-in-law's house.
You'll have to decide if Matt deserved to go to prison in the first place for the event that changed his life forever. I was not able to tie it all together until the very end; Coben did a great job with this murder mystery. You will not believe the twists and turns in this one as it crosses state lines from Nevada to New Jersey.
This was a good, fast, and nail biting read. In the end only you can decide who is "The Innocent" and probably someone you know who reads this story will not agree with you.