A review by shereadsbetweensips
The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben

5.0

Thirty years ago, Wilde came out of the woods surprising the little town. A feral little boy, with no memory of how he ended up in the woods in the first place. Wilde is now an adult, and he still doesn’t know where he came from, still trying to adjust to a life surrounded by others.

A little girl has gone missing and Matthew, a fellow classmate, asks for help from the person that has never failed him, his powerhouse of a lawyer, Grandma Hester Crimstein.

Hester youngest son, and Matthew’s father, used to play in the backyard with Wilde when they were kids. When Wilde was anything but a legend in town. Matthew’s father, now deceased, made Wilde Matthew’s godfather. I hope this is not too confusing. There is a lot to unpack in this book. So many storylines and so many plot twists, it just keeps you engrossed in the pages until you’re done.


Hester is willing to listen to her grandson’s story and is willing to help. She asks for Wilde’s help since he once was a lost boy and there’s no person in that town that knows those woods better than him.

It turns out that everything was much more complicated than it appeared to be. No one is taking Naomi’s disappearance seriously. She is the ghost of the school. The girl that has done nothing wrong but that everyone hates. The ultimate outcast, being severely bullied by almost every classmate. The ones that don’t participate, let it happen just because they do not want to be targeted by the cool kids.

That leaves Wilde and Hester to take desperate measures to find the girl, going publicly against the father’s wishes, just so later she can be found in her house basement, playing a sick online game just to impress everyone at school. The bullying turns dead and Naomi decides to leave again and this time no one really knows where she went.

If this story was only about that, it would be interesting alright, but everything turns sideways when in the plot a senator running for presidency gets involved, a family with so much money that is stupid, who happens to be the family of the maximum bully in school is also now looking for him. A finger is found in the forest and they cannot figure out where did he go or who took them. The ransom is not even money. They want the very compromising tapes of the said senator, so he can be removed from the presidential picture.


Let me stop here before I spoil it for you. When I tell you that Coben delivers an action/mystery-filled plot with the feeling of a blockbuster movie, I’m not even exaggerating. I have yet to be disappointed by this man. I can honestly say that it is one of my favorites so far. I have The Match waiting for me and I cannot wait where Wilde’s story goes from here.