Title: The Boy From the Woods (Wilde, #1)

Author: Harlan Coben

Publication Date: March 1, 2020

Number of Pages: 384

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Century

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

Synopsis:

Thirty years ago, a child was found in the woods. He had been living a feral existence, with no memory of how he got there or even who he is. Everyone just calls him Wilde.

Now another child has gone missing – Naomi Pine – who may be playing some sort of disappearing game. No one seems concerned about her whereabouts, not even her father.

No one – except criminal attorney Hester Crimstein, whose grandson knows Naomi is being bullied badly at school and is concerned for her safety. Hester is determined to find Naomi so she calls Wilde – now ex-military and an expert in security issues – and asks him to track her down.

But even Wilde can’t find Naomi. One day passes, then another, then a third.

Four days later a finger shows up in the mail.

And Wilde knows that what may have started as a game has now spiralled into something far, far darker…

Personal Thoughts:

Rating:

There are a number of authors that I want to try out this year and Harlan Coben is one of them. I’m not sure where to start with his works, but I only have copies of a few of his books so I just randomly chose from those and I’m glad that I started with The Boy From the Woods. Though it took me a while to get used to his writing-style, I was still immediately hooked with the story as the story opens up with a missing girl and a severed finger. So the first chapter already caught my attention.

The book follows the POVs of Hester, a criminal attorney, and Wilde, an ex-military who is also an expert in security issues. When Hester calls Wilde to investigate and track down a missing child, he goes all out. But as the days passed, he figured that there’s more to this case than what meets the eye and he is determined to uncover what is going on in this small town no matter what it takes.

Reading this book was a roller-coaster ride of complexities and is very action-packed. There definitely isn’t any dull chapters, I was totally glued to the story! There were so many real-life issues that was tackled in this book, you might think that the author couldn’t pull it off, but Harlan Coben did and it was exceptional. There were also numerous twists at the end that I did not expect, but I loved. This definitely won’t be my last Coben read.