Review on 💌 Missing You: A Heartwarming Product to Keep Loved Ones Close by Kurt Virden

Unfortunately I cannot recommend this novel by Harlan Coben. I've read almost all of his previous books and they were excellent, but I'm at a loss as to why this one bears his name. The truth is, it's so boring and stupid, so boring, so boring, that I have a very hard time believing he wrote it. That doesn't even come close to the quality of his previous letter. Maybe he didn't; A lot of bestselling authors (James Patterson comes to mind) hire groups of people to write for them and put their own name on it because that usually leads to sales no matter how bad things get. Kat, a police officer, hangs out at the bar her late father, also a police officer, often visits, sitting on a stool that he used. Her best friend, voluptuous and seductive, is a private detective, but we don't see her investigating anything. She is too busy flirting with men and when they approach her, she dismisses them as unworthy. She is a caricature. teenage fantasy. Brandon, a precocious teenager, is looking for Kat to help him find his missing mother and this is the main plot of a drawn out, tedious and lifeless story. It has a bit of everything: the aforementioned wealthy friend; a black homosexual transvestite (the only character remotely interesting and fleshed out), a hoarse-voiced, chain-smoking mother in denial about her husband's other life, a suspicious boss over her father's death, a bland ex-lover who left her and - wait - she still loves and haunts. Then there are the evil monsters responsible for kidnapping many people. There's even a zombie subtext featuring people in coffin-like boxes. The Mafia Don was just a sketch and so empty I couldn't believe Coben hadn't modified it at least a little. None of these characters attract attention. They're like stick insects. The plot is incredible, the ending is ridiculous and the whole book is a failure that had so much potential. When I reached the predictable ending, I didn't care what happened to either of them. To be honest, I have no intention of collaborating with any of my favorite authors, but where the heck did this dumb novel masquerading as a thriller come from? Not Coben's pen unless he was directing a teenager. I suspect this was an attempt to sell the book to a younger audience while retaining its loyal readership. It just didn't work. I paid almost $20 for it and regret not researching it as the sample looked fine. It's not like this. Two thumbs down.