Hold Tight

Critics

• Book Review: Hold Tight by Harlan Coben Share

  Coben is a skilled craftsman when it comes to creating an expressway of plot twists – you just never know where you are going to get on or off… let alone when the detour will lead you in an entirely different direction. When I picked up Hold Tight I ... (read full critics)

  blogcritics published on Sun, 11 Sep 2011

• HOLD TIGHT

  Harlan Coben has been garnering a lot of praise recently, none of which is remotely deserved if his latest, Hold Tight is anything to go by. Yet again we have a concept thriller with a hook expressed in the form of a question. ‘When it comes to your ... (read full critics)

  shotsmag published on Wed, 29 Sep 2010

7 Reviews

• 2 people find this helpful

  

  This book was just fantastic. Harlan Coben is a master of suspense. I could not put the book down from page 1, literally. The plot was intriguing, and while i am usually good at figuring mysteries out, it took me quite a while and towards the end before the pieces of this puzzle fell together. Brill ... (continue)

  This book was just fantastic. Harlan Coben is a master of suspense. I could not put the book down from page 1, literally. The plot was intriguing, and while i am usually good at figuring mysteries out, it took me quite a while and towards the end before the pieces of this puzzle fell together. Brilliant.

  Is this helpful?

  The Underdog said on Sep 19, 2009 about the Softcover edition | Add your feedback

• 

  Coben is a good writer, but these over-protective nutso parents are really unattractive, unlikable characters

  Is this helpful?

  wilkinsjordan said on Oct 16, 2010 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• *** This comment contains spoilers! ***

  

  Keeps you glued to the chair, even if...

  A perfect family: father, mother, 16 yo boy and 11 yo daughter. Parents that love their children and pretend to know anything about their habits and worlds. They soon discover they know nothing. Adam, their son, is involved in something too big for a young guy of his age. His best-friend has already ... (continue)

  A perfect family: father, mother, 16 yo boy and 11 yo daughter. Parents that love their children and pretend to know anything about their habits and worlds. They soon discover they know nothing. Adam, their son, is involved in something too big for a young guy of his age. His best-friend has already gave in and committed suicide, and Adam is slowly following the same fate. To avoid this horrible eventuality, his father and mother decide to spy on him. They put a special software inside Adam's computer and, as soon as they receive a copy of a really strange chat between him and an unknown nickname, they start to act. This will lead Mike, Adam's father, to a track that goes inside Bronx's bowels, where Adam uses to spend his evenings and where there is an illegal medicines' traffic in which Adam, as a son of a doctor, is involved, too.

  The extraordinary aspect of this book is that all the characters we meet since the beginning and follow while moving on different spaces and single stories are, in the end, all linked. The most unthinkable persons reveal themselves as a part of the main plot as the main characters.

  An interlacement of stories and characters impossible to guess at the beginning of the reading. But there are some falls. Just a couple of examples:
  1. Adam exchanges some instant messages with a person hidden behind a partially numerical nickname. Nobody understands what those numbers mean. Not Mike, not his wife, neither their best friend Mo, a math genius. Then, Mike gets to the club where the illegal medicines traffic starts, the entrance of which is closed by a security door provided with a number pad. Pages before reading how Mike will get into the club, the reader already knows that that nickname's numbers are the code that guarantees the access to the club. And, in fact, so it is. Maybe it could be something less foreseeable as, for example, a sort of inscription on pins that members should have and made by letters that, translated in numbers, gave access to the club. Maybe it could be something else, but not this, not that simple.
  2. Adam's best friend has committed suicide. Everybody thinks he didn't, everybody is induced to think he's been killed or, at least, obliged to kill himself. He's been obliged because he was involved in something dangerous that was destroying his life and would have destroyed his relatives'. In some way it's exactly so, but not completely. Instead of discovering about unguessable conspiracies, the reader discovers simply this: the young boy used to get medicines, to get too high and then he was too addicted to get off of it. That's all. No conspiracies, no homicide: he's really committed suicide and Adam, who we thought to be that desperate because involved in the same terrible thing like his best friend, is just depressed because... he has had a debate right the evening he is dead.

  By the way, in the end it's a good and interesting book.

  Is this helpful?

  Drawy82 said on Mar 24, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 

  A good read, as to be expected by the author. Nothing super special but an enjoyable book.

  Is this helpful?

  Deanna Kyre said on Jan 23, 2009 | Add your feedback

• 

  Full of unexpected twists and turns. Everything connects at the end. I really liked it and will be reading more by this author.

  Is this helpful?

  Heather Landry said on Jan 23, 2009 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

• 

  My first Harlen Coben book

  I had never read him before this book and I was really quiet happy that this is the book was my first. I was hooked from page 1 and I couldn't put it down. I can't wait to read more of Harlen Coben.

  Is this helpful?

  jazzescrapper said on Nov 16, 2008 | Add your feedback

See all 7 comments

Book Details

• Rating:
  (41)
  • 5 stars
  • 4 stars
  • 3 stars
  • 2 stars
  • 1 star
• English Books
• Hardcover
• ISBN-10: 0525950605
• ISBN-13: 9780525950608
• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Pub date: Apr 15, 2008
• Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Paperback, Audio CD, Softcover, Others and eBook

Groups with this in collection

• 50 Book Challenge! (844)

Prices Change currency & sellers