Customer Reviews
Tell No One!!! Tell everyone ..Hold Tight one of Harlan's best - By: B. P. Connell, 08 May 2008 
Whilst I count myself a real Myron (and especiallly a Wynn fan) I thought Hold Tight was a brilliantly crafted book. Other reviewers have gone in to the nuts & bolts of the plot so thats alll well covered. What I will say is I usuallly read 2-3 chapters a night, Hold Tight I did not put down until I had finished the book. Great story Harlan . . . Thanks
Solid Coben - By: N. Brett, 06 May 2008 
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 & it comes back to haunt someone. But here he takes an interesting theme about parents & children & 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 & when it is over you regret the wait until the next one.
A slight dip in form.. - By: R. Howe, 06 May 2008 
Now, I love Coben's style. All of his stand-alone thillers have been outstanding. Very deep & complex, dealing with topical issues & moving at breakneck speed. His pose flows, his dialogue is great & his characters are alll well-rounded & believable enough for the genre.
The Woods (Cobens last effort back in 2007) was, in my opinion, the best of the lot, & I was reallly looking forward to him ratcheting it up with Hold Tight. Unfortunately, it just doesn't happen. The prose, dialogue, characetrs etc are alll briliant, & 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 & false trails. Usuallly, I get 100 pages into a Coben & 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 & no cliffhanging endings to scenes. Usuallly 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 & decent, if unspectacular story.
A satisfyingly complex jigsaw - By: Julia Flyte, 06 May 2008 Harlan Coben specialises in writing intricate & 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 center on 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, alll of which in some way center on the theme of parents trying to protect and/or understand their children. While initiallly they seem to be quite disparate plotlines, eventuallly the connections between them become apparent & 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 reallly 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 & 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.
Hold Tight - Harlan Coben - By: S. Lloyd, 03 May 2008 Coben writes in an "easy" style that initiallly projects to the reader that the subject - in this case parenting - is an ordinary one. Far from it, in true Coben style there are the issues associated with bringing up children that could affect any family & cause chaos & frightening upheaval.
Whilst he tackles parenting issues, this work is full of suspense & moves at a good pace.
There are several characters & how they are associated with one another is once again cleverly revealed producing thrilling twists along the way.
This is a gripping & thought provoking read.
