Book Review: STAY CLOSE BY HARLAN COBEN

Genre:  Thriller
Published:  29 March 2012  (Orion Books)
Pages:  387  (Hardback)
Source:  BookDagger RealReaders

About the Book:

Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she's got two kids, a perfect husband, a house with a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at the age of forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Broome is a detective who can't let go of a cold case - a local husband and father who disappeared seventeen years ago - and spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man's family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them.

Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past never truly fades away. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realisation that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream - the boredom of suburban life, the thrill of temptation, the desperation that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades - they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper thin as a heartbeat...

Harlan Coben is the 'master of the hook-and-twist' ... as the blurb says and this book does hook you and twist you till you don't know which turn it's going to take....which I love in a book!

The three main characters all seem to be living normal lives, seemingly unrelated to one another, but they all have secrets from their past which will just not stay hidden.  When a man goes missing, their memories are taken back to one night 17 years ago when another man went missing but is there a connection?

The writing is fast and slick, sometimes a little too complicated, and there are some unsavoury characters, including a couple of bible-bashers called Ken and Barbie who are definitely NOT like their namesakes!  

This is the kind of book where you have to keep turning the pages as there are so many cliffhangers and I didn't guess the ending which is all good.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good thriller.