Don't Let Go by Harlan Coben

Book Review

"After all these years, they found me."

Don't Let Go will be released in the UK tomorrow (26th September 2017). It is written by Harlan Coben and published by Century.

If I was a teacher marking this book it would be a B- with the note; good effort but must try harder.

Harlan Coben is an established author but to me Don't Let Go read like a newbie author's offering, there's a good story in there, but it needs work. To be fair, I've never actually read any of his books before, and he's a bestselling author so he's obviously doing something right, but Don't Let Go just felt a bit...sloppy to me.


BLURB

Suburban New Jersey Detective Napoleon “Nap” Dumas hasn't been the same since senior year of high school, when his twin brother Leo and Leo’s girlfriend Diana were found dead on the railroad tracks—and Maura, the girl Nap considered the love of his life, broke up with him and disappeared without explanation. For fifteen years, Nap has been searching, both for Maura and for the real reason behind his brother's death. And now, it looks as though he may finally find what he's been looking for. 

When Maura's fingerprints turn up in the rental car of a suspected murderer, Nap embarks on a quest for answers that only leads to more questions—about the woman he loved, about the childhood friends he thought he knew, about the abandoned military base near where he grew up, and mostly about Leo and Diana—whose deaths are darker and far more sinister than Nap ever dared imagine.


Don't Let Go reads like a good first draft. There's lots of potential, and the story did draw me in, but there's also a lot that needs working on. Large parts of this novel could be cut down; what should take one sentence to describe often takes three, there are some unnecessary character traits and some characters who aren't expanded upon enough. The main thing though that almost made me stop reading after the first chapter, was that there are so many spelling errors. Maybe it's the ARC I was sent and it's going to be tidied up before it's published, but I've read several ARCs and this one had the most mistakes I've ever seen. This halts the flow of reading as spelling errors keep jumping out like jarring notes.

Overall, Don't Let Go needs a good editor to sit down and go through it, then it could go from an average book to a really good one.

However, there are definitely elements of Don't Let Go that I enjoyed; the story was, while not ground breaking, fresh enough to keep me, a world weary thriller reader, occupied. There were twists I didn't see coming and, though I did guess the whodunnit by the end, I didn't guess the how.

I liked the main character of Nap; he's a bit more than your average damaged cop with a drinking problem. His habit of talking to his dead twin brother sets him apart and I liked it as storytelling concept.

Other characters appealed as well, Augie and Ellie were more than two-dimentional supporting cast members and had background and traits that added depth. However, some of the lesser characters didn't feel very real, or just not very believable.

Harlan Coben is a bestselling author with several novels under his belt, but Don't Let Go, to me, read like a first novel. I suspect this may be the problem with successful authors which I see a lot; they become so famous that anything with their name on will sell, so for whatever reason, maybe it's the author insisting on leaving things in or maybe it's because the publisher knows it will sell they don't edit it as much, but the novels aren't put through such a strict editing process as a new author would be. And actually, all writers need a strict editor to go through their work and sometimes be cruel; cut chunks or point out when other bits aren't working.

I'd like to read some of Coben's earlier work as I did enjoy parts of Don't Let Go, it just frustrated me that it could have been better.

My Rating: 2.5/5 (rounded up to 3 stars for Goodreads etc)

I received a copy of Don't Let Go via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

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