Missing You

By: Harlan Coben

Narrated by: January LaVoy

Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's Summary

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Harlan Coben set huge sales records with last year’s Six Years - and he’s poised to do it again in his next breathtaking stand-alone thriller. Harlan Coben, author of six consecutive instant number-one New York Times best sellers and a total of 24 award-winning, best-selling, and internationally acclaimed novels, returns with another ripped-from-real-life thriller full of impossibly high emotional stakes and the real-to-life characters for which he has become famous.

©2014 Harlan Coben (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Words and music to the song “Demon Lover” composed by Michael Peter Smith, Bird Avenue PublishingASCAP, © 1986, used with permission. All rights reserved.

A different and wonderful crime thriller!

I'm catching up on writing some reviews of some of the best and worst Audible books I've listened to in recent years. Missing You is in "one of the best" category.

I am a long time Harlan Coben fan. This book is different from most. It is a crime/mystery thriller with a female protagonist. The NYC cop is determined to solve her dad's murder. Missing you is a touching and wonderful story.

Coben writes some great teen/YA novels, but this book is intended for adults. Nevertheless, it would be fine for teens.

January LaVoy reminds us again with her outstanding narration that she is one of the best.

Very highly recommended.

31 of 32 people found this review helpful

I Ain't Missing You

Wow, I thought this book was one of the best I have read so far this year. I think it was so perfect for my taste because it built an amazing back story, (actually two), that kept building and really helped me to connect with the characters. Then, just when the two mysteries were on the verge of making me crazy, the rollercoaster started down on its lightening speed descent. Hold on to your hat and whatever else you brought along with you because it has an extremely exciting, explosive ending with a very short cooling down period.

Kat is a NYPD Detective and has been trying to figure out why and who killed her father, (also a NYPD cop), eighteen years ago. When the person who confessed to his killing dies, the information he provided starts to become chock full of holes, which in turn sends Kat into overdrive with more questions than ever.

At the time of her father's death Kat's personal life basically went down the tubes. She has devoted herself to her work and searching for the truth behind what really happened all those years ago, this of course does not leave much time for relationships or dating. When her best friend signs her up on a computer dating service she is astounded to find an old love interest on the site as well. When curiosity gets the Kat, she sends a message out to him only to be shut down cold. Kat is confused but decides to let sleeping dogs lie, however, her best friend is not and starts her own little investigation.

Shortly after the the big brush off a young college student comes in out of the blue asking for her help to find his mother who he thinks is missing. She is perplexed as to why he would come to her for help when the crime, if any, is not in her district and she has never laid eyes on this young man before. Well, this is where the plot thickens, trusted people become deceptive and people she has never counted on for commeradery start coming out of the wood work to help her.

January LaVoy is a wonderful narrator, her voices and timing were spot on and certainly helped build the story. I highly recommend this suspense-thriller.

126 of 134 people found this review helpful

Like driving a mountain switch base doing 80

I always don't read anything about a Coben book before I start into it. One of the best things about this author is he ability to build the suspense early by opening just the right amount of questions. I liken Coben to a magician, a magician used diversion to astonish the audience. So too, in all Coben books, you think the story is going in one direction and then it goes in another. You think, wow, he has given away a too much in foreshadow only to be wrong only a few chapters ahead.

This is a story about a woman, a cop, and her murdered father who-dun-it. That's where the pedestrian plot end. I recommend to anyone from a later teen onward. You will be enthralled. I just can't give away any of it because you have to experience it for yourself.

60 of 66 people found this review helpful

"Missing You"

One of the best books I've read in a long time.
I have been a Coben fan for years. He hasn't disappointed yet!!

20 of 22 people found this review helpful

This story has it all!

This story was a great detective story, a great mystery and romance. Highly recommend it.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Be ready to sit in your garage to keep listening!

Harlan Coben has written another non-stop thriller that will leave you on the edge of your seat, and make you never want to stop reading! This book grabbed me immediately and never let go till the very end. I really like the character of Kat and would read more books with her in them.

What would you do if you found your ex (the one who got away) on a dating site well you find his picture but the name isn’t the same and when you message him he at first doesn’t seem to remember you. As if that isn’t bad enough some kid (Brandon) shows up at your door saying that same man went away with his mother and he thinks she is in trouble. Throw in a mystery about who really killed Kat’s father and away we go on this rollercoaster ride of a story. Be ready for twists and turns and red herrings, which will keep you guessing all the way to the end.

I love Harlan Coben’s books he always writes a good solid story with a mystery that keeps you on your toes, there was one part of the story I had figured out but my theory was not what Coben ended up writing so I still wasn’t 100% right and I love that in a mystery. I liked the fact that there weren’t any cardboard cutout characters in this book each character had their own identity and back story, which made me care about them even the ones that didn’t last long.

January LaVoy’s narration was very well done I liked that you always knew who was talking and that everyone had a voice, I must mention though there are times some of her male characters sound like cartoons but that was only a couple people so it was easy to overlook. This is my second narration by January and I really enjoyed both so I will seek out books where she is the narrator. Very well done narration.

If you can’t already tell I loved this book, so the only thing I can say to you is, what are you waiting for get to listening!

5 Stars

31 of 38 people found this review helpful

This is not the Harlan Coben you're looking for

A bad guy who kidnaps, robs and tortures. A girl whose father is murdered, compelling her to spend the rest of her life seeking his killer, breaking the rules to get there.... An online dating site where men are not who they say they are.

Sound familiar? Sound original? Sound so completely used up it will make you puke if one more story features these tired ideas? Then this is not the Harlan Coben you're looking for.

It gets worse. The evil bad guy rants on and on about his terrible plans--even using the same sentences word-for-word, over and over again and again and again. The cute, tough female cop thinks about nothing but her poor father's death, even tho it was 10 years previous, and she thinks about it a lot. Of course all this repetitive pondering allows a shallow plot to fill up the required 100,000 words for publication--get's you to 300 pages without much effort, but isn't good in any other way.

This is still acceptable commercial fiction, of course. I couldn't do it myself. But not up to par for this author. Either Harlan is tired, he's teaching his kid how to write, or he pulled out a drawer book and is on vacation.

67 of 86 people found this review helpful

Missing You, Coben!

I'm a big Coben fan, but this was more like a Stephen King book. It was full of violence and sick behaviors, a horror story more than a mystery His writing skills are still there to keep the story going, but it sidetracks in too many directions. Like all modern authors it seems, he feels a need to put in some gay and cross dressing characters just to be pc, that didn't really fit into the story well or add to the book. I've seen this same trend with many authors.....the more popular they become, the more gruesome they get. I often wonder...do they add the gore because they think they need to in order to keep selling books....or do they feel comfortable enough in their success to write what they always wanted? Whatever, I move on to other authors when they start this nonsense.

54 of 70 people found this review helpful

Outstanding Mystery

Unusually, the protagonist is a female cop. A visit by a strange teenage boy sets the dual mysteries spinning around each other.
One of the best police procedurals I've read all year, but not for the faint of heart.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Good read in my opinion...

While this book did not keep me on the edge of my seat biting my nails, I found that it was a good mystery with a cautionary thread running through it. I think that Harlan Coben did an excellent job in weaving two mysteries together. I recommend it, in my opinion it had good entertainment value.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful