Julie's Review: Six Years

Summary: In Six Years, a masterpiece of modern suspense, Harlan Coben explores the depth and passion of lost love…and the secrets and lies at its heart. Six years have passed since Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, 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 almost two decades, 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, 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 a 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. ~amazon.com

Review: Oh Mr. Coben, how I love your books! You never fail to pull me in with your fast-paced writing, riveting plot and your male character's charm. Six Years is no different. I admit, I now have a literary crush on Jake. At first, I wasn't sure if Jake was going to keep whining throughout the whole book about how Natalie was the love of his life and how he still can't believe that she married some other guy six years prior and left him high and dry. Thank goodness, the action started within the first five chapters because I would have wanted to smack Jake if that had kept up.

What starts off as an innocent look into if he could get a second chance with his ex when her husband dies suddenly, turns into a cat and mouse game. It is this game that makes the book fly. Of course I immediately think that Natalie is a CIA spy who needed to go into hiding because she was on some top secret assignment but I should have known I would be wrong. Mr. Coben never goes where I think he will.

What we have is a story of secrets and how they affect someone. How they can cause them to impair judgement and act irrationally. How one decision can affect a lifetime and how even falling in love can't always change the course of a life.

Six Years is out on March 19, 2013 and if you haven't read Harlan Coben before, then this is a good place to start and if you have read him, then this isn't one to miss.

Final Take: 4.50/5

I won my ARC copy from Dutton's Monday Giveaways on Twitter.