Mike and Tina Baye are worried about their son, Adam. He’s withdrawn from them lately, and it’s much more than the usual teenage, “leave me alone” behavior. His best friend recently committed suicide, and Adam has lost interest in all the things he used to love. Out of worry, Mike and Tina decide they need to know more about their son than he’s willing to tell them. So they install spy software on his computer and monitor who he talks to, what sites he surfs, what he reads. They discover that he’s involved in a crowd that does a lot of drinking and drugs. But what they learn that frightens them the most is the message someone sends Adam advising him to “just stay quiet and all safe.”

But Adam is afraid, and he runs off when he discovers his parents have been spying on him. Mike and Tina are frantic. They try to locate him using the GPS on his cell phone, and just as Mike gets close, he’s attacked and hospitalized by a group of men who don’t want him finding his son. And when they start to question all the people their son is known to have talked to recently, they come up against one stone wall after another. Mike and Tina soon learn that maybe Adam didn’t just run away. Maybe he was taken.

I liked this book quite a bit. I thought the diverse cast of characters that all seem to be separate and unconnected to the main plot were woven together smartly in the end. The book opens with a particularly gruesome event that seems to stand alone and make no sense to the major story. You wonder when it will come together, and how it possibly could when, just like that… it all does, and it makes sense.

I picture Coben with a giant plot board of sticky notes and string connecting them in front of him when he maps out his stories. He’d have to have some sort of system in place to keep it all sorted out. The guy’s great at plot, I will give him that. But I don’t think the writing was particularly great this time (word choices, phrasings, dialogue). But hey… I’ve read a lot of books that have been bestsellers that weren’t well-written. Goes to show you that it’s the story, the idea behind it all, that makes it a great read. You can be a technically gifted writer, have a way with words, but if you don’t have a story that grabs attention, you’ve got nothing.

This is a story about a woman named Grace Lawson who picks up her photos from a local print shop only to find there is a picture in the set that wasn’t taken with her camera. What’s strange about the picture is that when she looks closely at it, she thinks she recognizes a younger version of her husband Jack in it. And what makes it stranger still is that the woman he’s standing next to in the photo has a giant red X marked over her. When Grace takes the photo home and shows it to her husband to see if he knows anything about it, he reacts very strangely to it, claiming it isn’t him in the photo; then, excusing himself to take a phone call, he leaves the room and never comes back.

Grace is panicked. She’s part of a good marriage — her husband wouldn’t just leave her. She can’t believe a simple photo would just make him disappear. So she goes to the police, but they don’t believe her when she says her husband is in danger. They think he’s left her for another woman, perhaps the woman in the photo, and when she receives an ill-timed phone call from her husband telling her he needs some space just as she’s talking to the police, she knows they’ve written her off as the unsuspecting, cheated wife. But Grace knows her husband and can tell from the way he’s worded his phone message that he’s telling her he needs help and that the police shouldn’t be involved.

So Grace will have to find him on her own. And as she searches for him, she starts to learn that the photograph is much more dangerous than she realized. Her husband has already gone missing, and soon she receives the message loud and clear that she and her children are next if she doesn’t stop searching for him leave the photo alone.

And, as is usually the case with Coben novels, a whole cast of other characters (people in the neighborhood, long lost family members, even mobsters) become intertwined with the event depicted in that simple photograph of the crossed out girl and Grace’s younger husband. You get the sense that it’s a very small world out there.

I liked this book, but not as much as Coben’s other books. I felt the story clipped along nicely and that the suspense was thrilling enough to keep me reading through the night. I didn’t particularly care for the ending — I felt it came together too loosely in the end to justify all the connections between the characters. But hey, Coben isn’t a bestselling author for nothing. He can tell a story and he can tell it well. There’s just the right amount of gruesome violence, thrilling cat and mouse scenes, and twists along the way.

I received a review copy of this book in the mail recently and I was pretty excited when I opened it. I remember loving these sorts of books when I was a kid — the non-fiction volumes about strange facts, people and events… much like Guinness’s books of World Records.

This book is different in that it’s a huge, colorful book of the bizarre and unbelievable. It’s not limited to what’s happened this year, but pulls from history. This book is a perfect gift for young boys, but it’s also just as interesting to girls. And a certain 32 year old mom who spent a good part of an hour telling her 2 year old son to play with his toys because Mommy was flipping through it. I’m all for any books that get kids interested in reading, and I believe the Ripley’s publishers are a great resource for those reluctant readers.

From Ripley’s newsroom:

Enter If You Dare!

Each fantastic annual in the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! range contains completely new material. Every book is full of bizarre facts, incredible photographs, crazy stories, revealing interviews, and fun features – every one guaranteed to amaze.

Enter If You Dare also features icons throughout that direct you to live action clips on this very website, as well as a cool 8-page gatefold section showcasing sideshow performers from the past.

A mind-boggling array of incredible and bizarre facts, stories, interviews and features are all presented in a stunning new design. New highlights included “Ripley’s Revealed,” an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at such subjects as contortionism, fire-eating and sword-swallowing. Fascinating interviews with some of the planet’s most extraordinary people explore their motivations, while the popular “Ripley’s Research” boxes explain the science behind some of the most incredible takes in the book. Enter If You Dare also includes a dramatic double gatefold that throws light on the shady world of vampires, and two single gatefolds – a tribute to the Coney Island sideshows, and a lifesize portrait of tiny teenager Jyoti Amge who stands just 23 1/2 inches tall. With something strange to entertain and shock every member of the family, Enter If You Dare is sure to continue the massive success of the expanding Ripley’s book brand.

It’s been nearly 3 months since my last post? Yikes. Well, time flies when you’re busy, busy, busy. But I have been reading a bit here and there.  I’m just not finding the time or motivation to write reviews lately. I will though. I’ve been on a real Harlan Coben kick lately — keep your eyes peeled for reviews of Hold Tight and Just One Look. I’m also starting his Myron Bolitar series, with Deal Breaker on my nightstand. And I’m still plugging through Gabaldon’s Outlander series (just bought An Echo In the Bone in trade paperback at Costco). And I have a review copy of one of my childhood favorites to put up soon — the 2010 version of Ripley’s Believe It or Not “Enter if You Dare.” Hopefully I’ll find some time this week to put them up.