Harlan Coben is a name you would know if you have watched The Five.

The Five was a novel first and later turned into a crime drama that was aired on Netflix. It is a story about a 5-year-old boy named, Jesse who has gone missing. The plot then revolves around how his brother and his friends cope with the guilt and trauma surrounding Jesse’s disappearance and life thereafter.

I binge watched the entire show and decided Harlan Coben is an author I would search for in my local library. And I did find a few books from this guy. After all, he is a wildly successful crime writer who has written 28 books with his last 10 being up on Newyork Times Best Seller list.

Anyways, I digress. The objective is NOT to talk about The Five. If you want to know more about it, there is a post I wrote. Have a look 🙂

Today, it’s all about Six Years.

Harlan Coben’s Six Years

I have never read a crime novel that is interestingly humorous AND mercilessly nail biting at the same time. Well, yes I have read humorous mysteries in the past, don’t get me wrong.

But what happens with those type of books is that at the end it usually fails to deliver the suspense as it is too busy focused on being funny. Or the book fails to be funny as it promised because it was too busy being suspenseful. The balance was missing. But Harlan Coben has done a fantastic job in delivering both mystery and humor with a flourish!

I am so tempted to bombard you with some funnies from Six Years but no. It would be so out of context as you have no clue what I am talking about without reading. And I have no plans to bring you spoiler alerts if you decide to read Six Years after being convinced by me 😉

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Anyways, while reading some parts of Six Years,  I literally laughed out loud!  Like when the hero, Jake is kidnapped, or when bad guys were in hot pursuit of him, when he attends the funeral of a gangster, list goes on…

These are all plot twisting scenarios that give way to new developments in the book. As a norm, these are SERIOUS and DRAMATIC events and the last thing you would do is to laugh while reading it. But the beauty is as a reader you are so engrossed in Jake’s thought process that you see and feel exactly what he sees and feels. And mind you, Jake is too good at finding funny in any situation.

 

He admits this to us on several occasions.

 The mind goes where it goes.

So true!

Six Years is a story of Jake Fisher and his lost love Natalie. Six years have passed since Jake watched Natalie marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd.

But six years haven’t come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd’s obituary, he can’t keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd’s wife he’s hoping for . . . but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she’s been married to Todd for more than a decade, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life—a time he has never gotten over—is turned completely inside out.

As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can’t be found or don’t remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake’s search for the woman who broke his heart—and who lied to him—soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on carefully constructed fiction.

Harlan Coben once again delivers a shocking page-turner that deftly explores the power of past love and the secrets and lies that such love can hide.

As a reader, I am someone who does not let a new author get on my reading list that easy. I would read ALL books of my favorite authors and would rather spend my time waiting for them to write their next novel. I don’t go around searching for someone new to fill my reading list. But this time I did. I found a new author. Habits are meant to be changed, right?

And guess what Harlan Coben? You just made my list!

If you are looking for a new book to read, try Six Years. Suspense with a side of humor? Coming right up!