MADreads

What if?

August 18th, 2008 Mary K. - Central

Hold Tight, Harlan Coban’s new suspense novel poses a lot of “what ifs?”  For example, what if your troubled son is not communicating with you after the suicide of one of his friends and you install spyware on his computer to try to monitor his activites?  What if a teacher makes an unfortunate remark that ridicules the appearance of one of his students?

Mike and Tia Baye, the parents of sixteen-year-old Adam have been monitoring his online activities and one day they read a crytic message about a party.  After Mike tries to stop Adam from attending the party, Adam runs away and Mike starts a frenzied search for him and along the way learns a lot about what Adam and his friends have been up to.

Meanwhile, two women who turn out to know each other have been murdered, and one of them is the mother of the Baye’s daughter’s best friend.  Although the two cases don’t seem connected, the Baye family gets involved.

While there is a lot going on, all of the plot threads are wrapped up at the end of this suspenseful novel.  Coben does a good job of combining contemporary issues with thrills.  And as narrated by Scott Brick, Hold Tight is a great audiobook.  His reading style is perfectly suited to suspense novels.  You can check out the compact disc from the library or download it from the Overdrive collection.

Entry Filed under: Thriller