A review by humatariq
Win by Harlan Coben

4.0

This review is a work in progress, read at your own risk.







I have enjoyed some Harlan Coben books in the past and I still own around five of his books that I plan on reading. I like his brand of psychological thriller type of mystery books with a unique twist at the end. But for such books to be successful, the ending has to be great; and I have not loved all of his book endings. That's why I hadn't read any of his books for the past 2 year I think.

So I picked up this book expecting a psychological thriller, but that was not exactly the case. The tagline on the book, "If you lose you die", led me to expect a far different book than this one. To be clear, I was expecting maybe something like [a:David Baldacci|9291|David Baldacci|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1622821181p2/9291.jpg]'s [b:The Winner|113138|The Winner|David Baldacci|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347754561l/113138._SX50_.jpg|1369417]. But of course, the title of the book is not a verb but a noun. "Win", or Winsdor Horne Lockwood III is supposed to be a recurring character in Coben's Myron Bolitar series. So this is basically book 1 of the spin-off series for Win. I have read one or two Bolitar books and enjoyed them. But I do not remember this character. I understand he is supposed to be kind of like an anti-hero, but people still have to like anti-heroes. By the end of the book, I was still not sure whether I like Win or not.

The book is written in first person narration and at times Win seems to be just explaining his point of view to the readers. But I was a bit shocked at reading this line, it almost seems like he's breaking the fourth wall here:

"We are all masters of self-rationalization. We all seek ways to justify our narrative. We all twist that narrative to make ourselves more sympathetic. You do it too. If you are reading this, you were born in the top one percent of history’s population, no question about it. You’ve experienced luxuries that painfully few people in the history of mankind could have even imagined. Yet instead of appreciating that, instead of doing more to help those beneath us, we attack those who got even luckier for not doing enough."

I understand that Bolitar is a beloved character, but he referred to him so many times that I was rather sick of Bolitar by the end of the book. It seems Win misses his best friend way too much.

P.S. I understand that I made a mistake in not looking at the blurb carefully and expecting something else from this book entirely.