REVIEW: SHELTER BY HARLAN COBEN

Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron.

A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father.


Hardcover: 288 pages
Expected Pub Date: September 6, 2011
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Series: Mickey Bolitar #1
URL: www.mickeybolitar.com

Without a doubt Harlan Coben’s debut young adult novel is a hit!

I was so happy to have this book with me on my 6 hour flight to California.  I only wished I had another Coben novel for my long return flight back to New York.  He has a wonderful way of keeping the reader entertained throughout the entire novel.   Where some novels have a handful of moments that keep you on the edge of your seat, Shelter keeps you on the edge of your seat and never gives you room to sit back and relax. 

From the moment we meet Mickey, we can’t help but like him.  He has a dry sense of humor about him that actually had me laughing out loud on my flight.  And if he wasn’t enough, both Ema (Not Emma, but Ema) and Spoon are fantastic characters that you also can’t help but love!

Coben does a great job of creating very believable high school characters.  Mickey is the tall, handsome type who is great at sports.  Ema is the slightly overweight, Goth Chick, and Spoon is the nerdy and eccentric kid. Together, these three high school students encounter secrets and conspiracies that go WAY beyond the usual teenage problems.

Perhaps an unlikely trio, but together they will risk it all to find out what happened to Mickey’s girlfriend Ashley, who is the Bat Lady, and is Mickey’s father really dead!

I give this book 5 out of 5 Stars!

Guest Reviewer J. Martinez is the husband of Maria @ GCR and is happy to bring an occasional male perspective to the blog. He loves to read all kinds of books, but his favorites lean toward fantasy/fiction novels like Harry Potter and Eragon.