Hold Tight

by Harlan Coben

2009

Status

Available

Publication

Dutton (2009), Edition: Reprint, 496 pages

Description

Just how far parents will go to protect their kids? When their son Adam is implicated in the death of his classmate, Tia and Mike Baye install a sophisticated spy program on Adam's computer, and within days are jolted by a message from an unknown correspondent.

User reviews

LibraryThing member SugarCreekRanch
Hold Tight is an entertaining crime/suspense novel. There are two central storylines: parents decide to "spy" on their son's online activity after a friend's suicide, and a serial murderer and his accomplice are viciously killing women. I appreciated how this novel used technology in entirely
Show More
realistic ways (spyware, gps locators, etc) rather than going far-fetched as some tech-thrillers do. I wasn't thrilled with how long it took for the two story lines to connect, and even then the connection was light. Great ending, though.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MikeD
I enjoy all of Coben's books and this was no exception. Interesting story line about teenage suicide and parental control of children't internet activity.... the story moves fast with a few subplots intertwined. A nice read with vert nice plot twists!
LibraryThing member krissa
I liked it. It wasn’t as good as Tell No One, I wasn’t in suspense on the edge of my seat the entire time, but it was still good. I really like how Coben takes multiple strands, all seemingly unrelated, and ties them together in unexpected ways. It really makes you think, and wonder if you
Show More
should be looking over your shoulder.

I found the characters sympathetic, and it was easy to follow them on their journey for the most part. I could see why they made the decisions they made. And all were very distinct. As there were many of them, some never made an appearance as regularly as others. I may have forgotten their name by the time they came around again, but I never forgot their ‘character’. Once I started reading, they were easy to place once again.

It amused me, that Tia was a lawyer, and very logical, and Mike was a doctor, and sometimes didn’t approach things as logically, but still quite often, they came to very similar (if not the same) conclusions, at about the same time, but through very different ways.

It did raise some very interesting “make-you-think” questions. Like how much supervision/ knowledge of your child is too much? Is too much or too little a detriment? Is your child better off being too independent or too protected? How far would you go/ should you go to keep them safe? I know it is fiction, and the extreme, not the everyday, but still…

Will DEFINITELY be reading more Coben in the future. =D
Show Less
LibraryThing member porchsitter55
As a huge Harlan Coben fan, I was so ready for another fabulous read....but this book didn't fulfill my expectations. The plot was mediocre and there were way too many characters in the book to really develop a connection to. It almost seemed as if the author was trying too hard to create alot of
Show More
twists and turns...it seemed too contrived to me. As a successful, professional author, Mr. Coben certainly knows how to write a novel, and he followed all the "rules" of putting this story together, but this one just didn't do it for me. I did manage to finish the book, and it wasn't a complete bomb, but I expected better things from this accomplished author. I will hope for something more in keeping with Mr. Coben's usual high standards in the future.
Show Less
LibraryThing member she_climber
As with I think every Harlan Coben book, I really enjoyed this one. Lots of twists and turns, although I was concerned throughout the book that it was spreading itself thin with multiple storylines, but slowing they came together to two and in the very end offered a plausible explanation for how
Show More
even those two were connected.

As a parent of a young child this book freaked me out about all the dangers face children today and offered some interesting moral delimmas of how to protect your children.
Show Less
LibraryThing member wirtley
His best book yet! I could not stop reading. A teenage boy runs away from home. Another teenager committed suicide. Two other women were murdered. All these plots are linked together. Wonderful and suspenseful.
LibraryThing member colmena
suspensful and woven together beuatifully, good read with new a new set of characters.
LibraryThing member thekoolaidmom
Harlan Coben plays on every parents nightmare in Hold Tight. What would you do to save your child? How far are you willing to go to keep them safe? out of trouble? alive? Would you spy on them? follow them? die for them?

Hold Tight is the story of Dr. Mike Baye (pronounce "bye") and his family's
Show More
spiral into the terror of a teenage son who's missing and possibly into drugs, responsible somehow for his best friend's suicide, and in deep with a club specializing in being a haven, and facilatator, for teen partying.

"She looked up and down at the block. The houses were all so alike. She thought again about the sturdy structures trying to protect lives that were much too fragile. The Lorimans had a sick son. Hers was missing and probably involved in something illegal."

This book explores the difficult issues of trust within a family, between friends, neighbors, and business partners. "Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken." You can spy on someone for the right reason, even save their life, but in doing so you lose their trust, and a relationship falls apart in the absence of trust.

Hold Tight is a great book for fans of crime/mystery/suspense novels, and is an intense read for parents. All through the book, I kept thinking of my kids; what would I do? How far would I go to protect them?
Show Less
LibraryThing member MonicaLynn
So many interwoven stories in this book but also a very good read. Amazingly they all seem to tie in toghether in the end.
LibraryThing member eljabo
The first four-fifths of this book are great - exciting plot, lots of twists and turns, unexpected connections between the characters. In fact, I had a big 'ol crush on Harlan Coben and his oh-so-thrilling writing style. I couldn't put the book down - I was completely mesmerized.

And then I got to
Show More
the ending....Personally, I thought it was a bit of a mess. Everything wrapped up just a tad too succinctly. In some cases, it almost felt forced and I had to re-read a few sub-plots to figure out what actually happened.

But even with the so-so ending, this is still a pretty enjoyable story. Definitely a great beach read!
Show Less
LibraryThing member miyurose
I have mixed feelings about this. First of all, I really don’t think this is his best work. My favorite Coben book is still No Second Chance. But I didn’t dislike this. Coben creates an incredibly complex plot here. I felt like I needed a flowchart to keep track of all of the different
Show More
characters and story lines. There’s two main plot lines here, and on the surface they don’t really have anything to do with each other. In my mind, they ended up being connected by circumstance, rather than design. I’m not sure that’s the best way to describe it, but if you read it I think you’ll know what I mean.

The main discussion point for this book seems to be all the stuff about spying on your kids. I found that I don’t really have an opinion of whether it’s good or bad… in the book I think it can be seen as both. There was a lot here about protecting your kids — it was the motivation for almost every character. The plot was almost too complex to be believable, or maybe it was so complex that it is very believable. I’m afraid to say much more because part of what keeps you reading this book is not knowing what twist is coming next. One storyline — the one with the Baye’s next-door neighbor and her sick kid — probably could have been left out altogether. It didn’t really add anything.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jenforbus
In Harlan Coben's latest thriller, HOLD TIGHT, Mike and Tia Baye experience a chilling couple of days because of a decision to put spyware on their son's computer.

When Mike and Tia learn through an e-mail that Adam is going to attend a party with drinking and drugs, they set out to intercept him
Show More
and prevent him from going without letting on to the fact that they know, and even more importantly HOW they know. But something goes awry when there is no party. But where is Adam? That's when Mike starts following him via the GPS in Adam's cell phone. This plan leads Mike to a shady neighborhood where HE is attacked, and he still hasn't found Adam.

As if Mike Baye doesn't have enough to worry about, his medical partner, Ilene Goldfarb is treating Lucas Loriman, the son of his next door neighbors Susan and Dante Loriman. Through blood testing to find a kidney donor, they learn that Dante is not Lucas's father. The young boy doesn't have much hope unless they can locate his actual father or a paternal relative.

AND the plot continues to layer with the abductions and murders of two women connected to this same neighborhood. Those murders tie into a whole separate element of the novel - or so it seems to be separate.

Coben juggles a lot of characters and plot lines in this novel. He does bring them together at the end of the book, but you may want to have a small chart to keep track of everyone in the book. I found myself asking, "now which character is this again?" quite often throughout the book.

If you're a parent, this book might just scare the bejeebers out of you. The obvious question threaded throughout the entire book is "should you spy on your children?" And Coben doesn't give you his opinion one way or the other. That's the point of the multi-dimensional plot. He gives you a look at the evils of both options.

Coben has this knack for slowly giving you clues that you don't know you're getting. So you feel like you're in the dark with no idea where you're headed - and with the twists and turns in this novel, that just intensifies the feeling of being completely lost. But then he starts to bring all the pieces together and they make sense. I found myself saying, "of course!" more times than once as the book was drawing to a close. I will admit that there was one element I found too convenient in the end, but you can have that with fiction, I guess.

I think I've said this before about Coben, but every time I pick up one of his books I think it should be locked in a time capsule. He defines the statement "art imitates life." This book deals with present-day technology and the ethics surrounding that technology, but it also imitates the language and values of the present. While I do hope the events of this book aren't happening (or haven't happened) anywhere in the world, it isn't hard to imagine them happening because of the realism in all other elements of the book.

One of the other heavy topics that comes up in this book is teenage suicide. One of the characters commits suicide before the story begins. Coben gives the reader a glimpse of the effects this event has on both parents as well as the character's best friend. I've not had a child commit suicide, but I could definitely connect with Betsy Hill after this insight:

"The house was dead.

That was how Betsy Hill would describe it. Dead. It wasn't merely quiet or still. The house was hollow, gone, deceased - its heart had stopped beating, the blood had stopped flowing, the innards had begun to decay.

Dead. Dead as a doornail, whatever the hell that meant.

Dead as her son, Spencer."

Don't look for a lot of character development in this novel. The focus is more on the ethical question of spying and on the plot development. Of course at 415 pages, if Coben had put in more character development, I might have been reading for another week. But I think the lack of character development was intentional. This approach made the scenario open to anyone. This isn't something that could happen to only a select, specific group of people, but rather it could happen to the family down the street...or even the family right there in your own home. And that is the scariest part of all.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lrobe190
A serial killer is viciously murdering seemingly random women and is smart enough to keep the police off his trail. Meanwhile Tia and Mike Baye have made the decision to install spyware on their teenage son's computer to trace his activities since he has become moody and withdrawn after his best
Show More
friend commits suicide. Tia and Mike's 11 year old daughter is spending most of her time with Yasmin, a friend who was humiliated by a teacher at their school and has become a target of hateful comments by her classmates. Somehow Coben takes these seemingly unconnected events and ties ithem all together in this tense thriller. I read it in one day because I couldn't put it down. This is one of Coben's best!
Show Less
LibraryThing member busyreadin
Disappointing new book. Too many different story lines, and characters that don't evoke any feeling toward them one way or the other.

"How well do you really know your child?" is the premise of the book. A couple electronically spying on their teenage son become enmeshed in a teen suicide, pharm
Show More
parties, and a serial killer.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MsGemini
Great book! I enjoyed all the twists and turns. The variety of story lines made for an interesting read. Coben always keeps me on the edge of my seat.
LibraryThing member sharlene_w
Harlan Coben weaves together several subplots: teenage suicide and runaway, two murders, and parents using spyware to keep tabs on their teenager. I enjoyed the drama and intrigue for the first 3/4ths of the book, but it seemed to fizzle at the end. While it was a plausible resolution it was
Show More
difficult to sort things out as I slogged through the last few chapters as my attention had waned. Thoroughly enjoyed "In the Woods" by the same author and would probably read more of his work.
Show Less
LibraryThing member loridaniels7
This is the first time a read a Harlan Coben book. And I assure you it wont be the last. As a matter of fact as soon as I am done writing this I think I will run down to the library for another.

Being the mother of two teenagers this story grabbed me right away and wouldnt let go. I couldnt put it
Show More
down. It brought out many emotions in me. I cried at times, bit my nails, paced while reading, and even yelled out loud. No other book has ever had me on such an emotional roller coaster. I loved everything about it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member RPerritt
I really enjoyed this book. It kept me on the edge of my seat. All of the characters tied up together nicely.I am definately reading more by this author. Who would have known that the "villian" in this book was a little girl. It still had a happy ending.
LibraryThing member devenish
This is one of those books that are a struggle the complete. The story line of this one is all over the place and much too weak anyway. The best character (the woman Police Chief) is not allowed to develop to her full potential. At the same time most of the other characters are unsympathetic and
Show More
even annoying.
Much is not followed up and the whole caboodle is just a mess.
This has got to be Harlan Coben's weakest book yet.
Show Less
LibraryThing member andsoitgoes
A fantastic read full of suspense. Hard to put down. Keeps you guessing almost to the end.
LibraryThing member mlschmidt
I couldn't wait to start this book..I read the first three or four chapters and was hooked, didn't want to put it down, then, it went south for me. It just lost all the punch and excitement, I was really astounded to see that it made bestsellers lists.
I've loved the past Harlan Coben stand alones,
Show More
raved about them to anyone who would listen, however, these last two books, Hold Tight and The Woods have really left me disappointed. They both grabbed me at first and then fizzled out. I've been trying to put my finger on what the fizzle point was, I haven't quite nailed it, but, its almost as if every book is kept within the same pattern. Would love to know if anyone else feels the same. I still enjoyed it, but will not "rave" about either one of his past two books.
Show Less
LibraryThing member beccam2
I am a Harlan Coben fan and have enjoyed all his books. This one is a bit different. While it has his usual plot twists and turns- and he excels at that- in this book he failed to develop characters that we really understood or even cared about very much.They seemed to be more of a plot device than
Show More
real people. Secondly, he did have to stretch to tie all the elements together, and it wasn't particularly believable. However, despite these flaws, I still enjoyed the book. So 3 1/2 stars.
Show Less
LibraryThing member meags222
I have to admit I read this book in one day. The story just drew me in. It also dealt with the issue of the right of privacy vs the role of a parent to keep their child safe. Mike and Tia install spyware on their son's computer because he was acting weird after the suicide of his best friend. I am
Show More
not sure where I stand on the issue. On one hand, I think of course he is acting weird, his best friend just killed himself. I think it is a little much to install spyware on his computer and monitor his every move. If he ever found out, all the trust that has taken years to build is so easily broken. On the other hand, in the novel it turns out their son is in some serious trouble and his parents were able to help him out of it. One may say, if this is at the cost of losing some trust then so be it. I think you need to find a balance. No one said parenting was easy.
Other than that, the storyline sucks you in and you really can't put the book down. There are a few side stories and in the end they are all brought together brilliantly. I give this book 4.5 out 5
Show Less
LibraryThing member rdurant1217
Harlan Coben is a masterful story-teller, interweaving the lives of the characters in a way that helps to shape and enhance the main story. In this book, the crux of the story revolves around the Baye family and what happens when high-school aged Adam, the oldest son, goes missing. Coben moves
Show More
things along, never letting the story languish and keeps the reader engaged. It's almost impossible to put this book down - I had to read it straight through. His dialogue is as real and witty as ever and his language paints a picture in your mind without being overly wordy or fluffy. Coben is one of the best writers out there now and this book does not disappoint.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jeremytaylor
Hold Tight might not be Harlan Coben’s best book ever, but it’s right up there. Like a literary version of the movie Crash, this book brings a series of seemingly unconnected—and disconcerting—storylines together in increasingly unexpected ways. As the characters and subplots draw closer
Show More
together, Coben reveals clues with agonizing slowness, tantalizing the reader with glimpses of possibility before veering off in another direction. By the time all the stories have been brought to their unified and amazingly coherent conclusion, the only loose end that remains is the unsettling reality of the human condition.

Faced with a sudden decline in their 16-year-old son Adam’s school performance after a friend’s suicide, Mike and Tia Baye decide after some soul-searching to install a spyware device on Adam’s computer. What they find is not reassuring. Meanwhile, their daughter Jill is dealing with a close friend’s public humiliation after a teacher’s mean-spirited comment. Their next-door neighbor’s son has been diagnosed with a potential fatal kidney disorder. A woman with local ties dies violently. And when Adam disappears after a cryptic instant-message exchange suggesting a drug party, the Bayes must battle unanswered questions, unhelpful authorities, and unresolved family issues in their quest to find—and hopefully save—their son.

The book should be read with caution, as it contains lots of drug references, some minor language, and some inexplicit sexual content. But the real tension comes not from objectionable material but from the choices the characters face. Coben does a masterful job of allowing his characters to face real, difficult issues and deal with them in a variety of ways—some admirable, some most definitely not. If the book has an underlying moral theme, it seems to be “live and let live”; the question of whether it’s appropriate for parents to spy on their children takes center stage for much of the story.

This is in some ways an uncomfortable book to read, as the central issues tend to detract from the sheer entertainment value. Nevertheless, Coben has succeeded in combining those issues with good writing and excellent pacing to form a true-to-life story that will stay in the back of readers’ minds for a long time after the final page is read.
Show Less

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2008

Physical description

496 p.; 4.25 inches

ISBN

045122650X / 9780451226501

Barcode

1601425
Page: 2.2491 seconds