In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Book Summary and Reviews of Six Years by Harlan Coben

Six Years by Harlan Coben

Six Years

by Harlan Coben

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • Published:
  • Mar 2013, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

In Six Years, a masterpiece of modern suspense, Harlan Coben explores the depth and passion of lost love - and the secrets and lies at its heart.

Six years have passed since Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd.

But six years haven't come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd's obituary, he can't keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd's wife he's hoping for - but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she's been married to Todd for almost two decades, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life - a time he has never gotten over - is turned completely inside out. 

As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can't be found, or don't remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake's search for the woman who broke his heart, who lied to him, soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on a carefully constructed fiction.

Harlan Coben once again delivers a shocking page-turner that deftly explores the power of past love, and the secrets and lies that such love can hide.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Coben has achieved greater suspense in other thrillers, but this ranks among his strangest and most ingenious plots." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Riveting reading." - Booklist

"Starred Review. [Harlan Coben] delivers another amazing novel that will resonate with readers long after the final page is turned.The narrative is immersive, and the well-drawn characters and twisting plotting are stellar. With such a cool hook and a surprising and satisfying payoff, don't wait six years to read what might be Coben's best since Tell No One." - Library Journal

"Six Years is a mind blowing, brain twisting, knuckle biter where nothing is as it seems. Coben never fails to deliver on his promise to keep readers riveted to their seats until the final page. Whether you're a devoted fan of Coben or you've never read a single book of his, don't miss this page turner! You'll be come an instant fan." - FreshFiction.com

"[Harlan Coben's] best book yet." - Suspense Magazine

This information about Six Years was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Jason T

Stick to Pure Thrillers Mr. Coben, Avoid the Romance
Contains spoilers

Harlan Coben novels have always been some of my favorite to listen to on long car rides. They are suspenseful and intriguing, albeit very formulaic. This novel, Six Years, attempts to add a flavor of romance into the mix. The problem is not the romance angle. The problem is that the entire premise of the novel makes the lead character so detestable and downright pathetic that it's tough not to just scoff at his actions.

The main character, Jake Fisher, is 35, and the most unintelligent and least studious college department chair you will find, fictional or otherwise. The guy works at what is supposed to be a prestigious university, is very young, and has risen to a position of leadership in the political science department. Yet he plays X-Box, gets drunk regularly and picks up graduate students for one night stands. Not really professor material.

The worst thing, and what makes this entire novel unbelievable, is that this guy had a 3-month fling with a woman 6 years ago, and is hell bent on finding her because the man she assumed to be her husband was murdered. He continues in his ridiculous pursuit after running into a corrupt police force, being beaten into unconsciousness and barely escaping with his life, being kidnapped by the mafia, killing a mobster hitman and barely escaping with his life, going after a guy in the mafia, hunting down this woman's sister and mother, finding out that his best friend is involved in the conspiracy and says he will kill him if he goes any further, and on and on and on.

All this, for a THREE MONTH FLING SIX YEARS AGO. It is the most unrealistic scenario Mr. Coben has ever penned. Creating circumstances that are unbelievable and far fetched works in a thriller because not everyone can conceive of those situations or relate. However, creating entirely unbelievable and unrealistic characters and unrealistic responses to situations that are commonplace to every reader, makes the entire thing feel fraudulent. It's almost as though Mr. Coben has never actually experienced a summer fling, or a broken heart, or a lost love. These are common things that occur to everyone. And not a single one of them reacts in anywhere near the obsessive and stalker-ish manner that "Jake Fisher, college professor" reacts. Forget all the crazy stuff he ran into that CLEARLY tells him to just walk away, the initial desire to hunt down a woman who left you 6 years ago after 3 months just does not resonate. It's soooooooo far-fetched. It's even more far-fetched than a secret organization who trains and hides people, or the mafia putting a hit out on a professor who gave the boss's son a bad grade. All that stuff works in fiction. But this pathetic character is just not realistic to be the protagonist of a novel.

The Benedict character is actually far more believable emotionally. The man was married to the love of his life for 12 years or so and then made the gut-wrenching decision to disappear and make her believe he was dead so that he could save her life. He drinks and canoodles with women as a means of blocking out the pain of leaving his wife behind, even if he knows it's for a great reason. But we, the reader, are expected to think that "Jake" feels the same hurt and emotional pain that Benedict does after a 3 MONTH FLING? It's ludicrous and actually horrifying that the two character's pain and emotional turmoil is presented as being comparable. Come on man.

The thriller aspects of the book are not so bad. That's Coben's bread and butter. But they are always trumped by the motive that Fisher lacks. It's just not there. Coben simply does not understand human relationships to write a love story. A father and husband looking for his wife and protecting his children works. A stripper escaping her past life works. Most of his main characters tend to work. Jake Fisher does not work. He is just not believable because no one would react that way and if anyone did, they would be obsessive and stalker crazy, they wouldn't appear devoted.

Also, stop using baseball bats and biting. In every book the main character gets hit with a baseball bat and then there is basically a cut and pasted paragraph of the pain in the head as they come to. And yet, never concussions. They can always spring up and run away. Stop using baseball bats.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Harlan Coben Author Biography

Harlan Coben was born and raised in New Jersey.  After graduating from Amherst College as political science major, he worked in the travel industry. He now lives in New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children.

Coben is the first author to win all three of the most coveted literary awards: the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award.  His books include the Myron Bolitar series, as well as other standalone novels, including Play Dead, Miracle Cure. Tell No One, Gone for Good, No Second Chance, Just One Look, The Innocent, The Wods, Hold Tight, and Caught. Harlan Coben's books have been published in more than twenty-two languages. 

Author Interview
Link to Harlan Coben's Website

Other books by Harlan Coben at BookBrowse
  • The Innocent jacket
  • Tell No One jacket

13 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more thrillers...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...
  • Book Jacket
    The MANIAC
    by Benjamin Labatut
    The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut is an ambitious work that falls squarely into the category of fiction...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Libby Lost and Found
    by Stephanie Booth

    Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.

Who Said...

Books are the carriers of civilization

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.