Tell No One by Harlan Coben

Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to a brand new book review! For this review, I get into Tell No One by Harlan Coben, an interesting mystery that has a comparable plot to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn but is definitely unique in its own ways.

Main Characters:

• David Beck: A practicing doctor who holds trauma due to the loss of his wife when she was kidnapped and killed when the two were together, gets a weird email that leads him to believe that either his wife or someone connected to her has come back to give a message
• Elizabeth Beck: Is killed when she and David are on a trip together, she has skeletons in her closet that David is left to unravel years after her death

My Review

Tell No One by Harlen Coben is an interesting mystery thriller that definitely kept me guessing throughout. While the mystery itself was good it got a bit boring, and over the top for me at parts which kind of dragged it down. It’s definitely a bit theatrical, but overall it’s not a bad read. I hate to compare it to Gone Girl because while they do have some similarities they are very different. I would say though that if I had to choose between the two I may go more the Gone Girl way in terms of the favourite or the one I would recommend more.

I gave Tell No One a 7/10 rating. I think that if the weirdness of the book had been toned down a bit I would have liked it more. That’s very much a me thing though, if you’re a reader who loves very theatrical and colourful characters I would defiantly recommend this one to you. I tend to enjoy more realistic characters which may have something to do with why I wasn’t so pulled into the book. The mystery itself is very interesting and very smartly played out. I did feel like some parts could have been skipped as they weren’t really needed, but there weren’t many of those.

Early on in the book the reader is spun a long-term love story between David and Elizabeth. The two have been head over heels for each other since they were small children. This makes it all the more crushing when we are told the story of how 8 years ago when the two were on a trip Elizabeth was taken from David never to be seen alive again. Now 8 years in the present David is working as a doctor in a low-income neighbourhood and continues to try to move on from losing his wife. Even though so much time has passed, his being there at her kidnapping has haunted him for ages. While David hasn’t fully moved on he has in some ways, and that’s why it’s so unexpected when he gets an email containing information that only she and Elizabeth knew. The question becomes did they get the wrong person when Elizabeth’s body was found and it was concluded that she was killed by a serial killer that was active during that time, or has Elizabeth been alive this whole time?

I thought the mystery itself, who is sending David these messages, and what it means is an interesting one. It’s definitely stronger throughout the first part but gets a bit all over the place near the middle and end. I liked that in the first part David was a character clinging onto his humanity, desperate to figure out who he is outside of this woman he has built his entire life around, only to be pulled back in by her 8 years later. This kind of gets lost in the second half of the book and David very much starts acting like someone he isn’t throughout the rest of the book. Arguably it’s to find justice for his wife, so who wouldn’t do what he does? But I was surprised how quickly he started doing things that did not seem like a part of his nature. I think as well there is this air of David trying to fix the situations he couldn’t save Elizabeth from all those years ago, almost like trying to take his power back, but it more seemed like he was just losing it to me. Maybe other people who read this book got a different vibe from it all though.

While the book does have its downfalls I did like parts of David and some of the other characters that pop up in the book. As I said before the mystery itself is strong it’s just how it plays out that gets a bit wobbly. I think that the long-winded history between David and Elizabeth is an important part of the book because realistically he probably wouldn’t have gone to the lengths he did to find out what happened to her if it wasn’t for it. It’s kind of sweet though, while the book is definitely dark and twisted, their love for one another is this little light in it all.

*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want any spoilers ***

While the ending to the book, what really happened to Elizabeth, and how it connects to the messages David gets, was well played out it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting it to be. I didn’t love the ending but I didn’t hate it either.

So, it’s really Elizabeth who is sending David those messages. It’s played off as though it can’t be her throughout most of the book though because her body was found after she was kidnapped, except of course, it wasn’t really her body. This is where things get a bit complicated. It turns out that Elizabeth had some dirt on a local wealthy guy whose family was very influential. Brandon Scope didn’t like this and planned to kill Elizabeth in response. Scope’s father is very influential, and when Brandon tries to kill Elizabeth and ends up dead instead Scope believes that it’s Elizabeth who kills him and will stop at nothing to kill her in revenge. Therefore Elizabeth and her father faked her death to protect her from the Scope family.  

The big secret that gets exposed in the end after David stops the Scope family and Elizabeth can come back is that she never killed him. It was actually David. When Brandon went to kill her she wasn’t home, David was. Elizabeth took the blame to try and protect him. It was a bit puzzling to me, but it did maybe explain as well why David thought she was really dead all this time, because of what he did to Brandon.

The thing that was a bit odd as David was trying to figure this out is he gets pretty violent, which seemed out of character for him. I guess in the end though it’s exposed that he really had this part of him in him all this time.

I guess the story ended nicely with the two able to come back together again, but in all honestly, I didn’t really like Elizabeth much by the end of the book. I mean I got why she did everything she did but it was a bit of an eye roll to just let the guy you’ve loved your whole life believe you are dead for 8 years just to protect him.

I have checked out some of Harlan Coben’s other books before and I will say that so far Tell No One is my least favourite. Take that with a grain of salt though because it just ranks well-written books against each other, and this book is just the least best out of some other great books. I think you should definitely check this one out though if you are looking for a fun weekend read.

Have you read Tell No One by Harlan Coben before? What did you think?

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