Book Review: I Will Find You by Harlan Coben

I Will Find You by Harlan Coben is the perfect read if you love thrillers and want to start reading books by Harlan Coben, who is a master of storytelling.

How far would you go to prove your innocence? What would you be willing to do to find out the truth?

Those two questions are explored in I Will Find You by Harlan Coben. I finally decided to jump on the Harlan Coben bandwagon and I'm glad I did.

I Will Find You was my second book of the year and the first thriller I've read in a while. Reading Harlan's work just reminded me why I love thrillers and has definitely put him on my list of authors I love.

And because I loved reading I Will Find You, I thought I'd do a book review to entice those of you who have yet to discover Harlan's work to give it a go. Also, I recently discovered that I Will Find You is set to join some of Harlan's other books as a Netflix adaptation, which I am very excited about.

But first, what is I Will Find You actually about?

Novel Synopsis

I Will Find You is a fast-paced thriller that tells the story of David Burroughs, a man imprisoned for murdering his three-year-old son. Only, David knows he didn't commit the murder, despite what the evidence says.

After five years in prison with no visitors, his ex-sister-in-law, Rachel, arrives. During her visit, she shows David a photograph of a friend at a theme park, and in the background, a little boy looks oddly familiar to David — it's Matthew.

With the hope that his son is now alive, after all this time, David hatches a plan to escape prison and venture on a mission to prove his innocence, find his son, and uncover the truth of what really happened the night he woke to find himself covered in blood over the body of his supposed son.

My Review - I Will Find You by Harlan Coben

Genre: Thriller

Rating: 4.5 Stars

I went into reading I Will Find You with balanced expectations; I was aware of the hype surrounding Harlan Coben, but I also wanted to make my own opinion without outsider influence, hence why I read this before starting to watch the adaptation of Missing You on Netflix.

Sometimes, when there are a lot of high expectations about a particular author or book, it can be scary to start reading them because what if you don't like it? However, I didn't have that problem and I don't think many people would with Harlan's novels.

I absolutely loved I Will Find You. It did take me a little longer than I would've liked to read it, but I was very ill once I'd reached 40% of the book and I couldn't read any of it for a few days. Once I'd recovered though, I devoured it.

The thing that made me decide to read I Will Find You was the plot. The whole idea of an innocent father trying to prove to everyone that his son is alive and that he is innocent, even when they don't believe him, intrigued me. As a creative writer myself, I understand the power of an interesting and exciting premise and this book had that.

Throughout the book, I didn't find any flaws in the plot. I thought it was a well-paced book that wasn't too fast so you powered through it without understanding things and that wasn't too slow so you got bored.

From the get-go, you empathise with David as a reader, even if you're not a parent yourself. His first-person narrative gives you insight into his thoughts, and you're taken on this journey full of ups and downs with him, right until the very end. And the plot twists...

After reading I Will Find You, I think Harlan is a master at planting threads throughout the story, giving you multiple to follow, hinting at things to come, and surprising you with the truth. I wasn't only hooked on David as a character, but the mystery surrounding it all.

Of course, David is the protagonist, but the book isn't told solely from his perspective, and I think that made it more enjoyable as well because there was an extra layer of complexity added. In a third-person narrative voice, we get to see the perspectives of the FBI agents investigating David's escape from prison, we see Rachel's perspective of helping her incarcerated brother-in-law, and we eventually get insight into a couple of other perspectives that — without spoilers — relate to the truth of what happened that fateful night.

I Will Find You had not only a great plot but also a cast of good characters, some humour, emotion and lots of surprising events.

If you've read some of Harlan Coben's books, let me know what you thought and if you haven't yet ventured into the world of Harlan Coben's books, hopefully, I've persuaded you to give them a go. You can read I Will Find You by Harlan Coben on Amazon, here.

Until next time...