We love to read Harlan Coben’s books for book club.  Sometimes we just wanna have fun and don’t care about finding out about some important truth.

Coben’s books don’t usually arouse in us the desire for lengthy conversations on the book’s theme, setting or its message.  However, the author always has these suburban subtleties mixed into the story that we delve into with verve.

Do we really know about our spouse? Our friends?  Adam Price, the central character, finds out that he doesn’t know everything about his wife or his friends.

Adam is an attorney living in Cedarfield, N.J. with his wife Corinne and their two sons. At a lacrosse meeting in the American Legion Hall, Adam is confronted by a stranger who tells him that his wife had faked her pregnancy.

Coben first surrounds us with the normalcy of a suburban dad going through his typical day and then bam – drops a bomb. When Adam confronts his wife about the allegation, which he believes is truthful, his wife tells him they’ll talk later.

Then, in a twist his wife disappears and the story begins to go this way, then that way – as all of his books do. As a book club we love this roller coaster ride. We spend time talking about which twist we saw coming and which one we didn’t.

The story takes a further twist when we find out about other people who have been approached by a stranger and had their lives changed also. Just in case the other original mystery left you wanting more, Coben turns up the heat by adding new layers to the plot line.

So, why pick a mystery for a book club book? There are many reasons, but the main one is we all like them. Mysteries and thrillers keep us engaged in reading when we have precious little time to read. Well, I read every day – it’s my passion, but not all of our members can. When we pick a mystery we pick one that we can relate to. Coben tends to write about suburban New Jersey people with kids, dogs and mortgages, which is who we are. His intricacies of suburbia are always spot on and for this book we had a good discussion about youth sports and parents.

This was the first time I didn’t care for the ending, but I can’t say more without giving away the story. All in all it was a good book and we all enjoyed it.

Rating: 7.0