56. Six Years - Harlan Coben

read by Scott Brick
listened to while driving back & forth to work during the opening days of the school year...
2013, Dutton
368 pgs.
Adult mystery
Finished 8/20/15
Goodreads rating: 3.78
My rating: 3 - liked it for the most part
Setting: a prestigious contemporary college (Landford) in Western Massachusetts in the present time. Amherst, perhaps?

First line/s:  "I sat in the back pew and watched the only woman I would ever love marry another man."

My comments:  Well. The love story part of this is ridiculous, sappy, and over-the-top.  However it's an action-packed page turner when it comes to the mystery and following the clues.  I'm not a big Scott Brick fan when it comes to readers, so he came really close to ruining the story for me.  Maybe I would have liked it better if I'd read it or if it were read by someone else?  So, six of one; half-a-dozen of the other....I liked this, I didn't like this.....

Goodreads synopsis:  Harlan Coben, the master of domestic suspense, returns with a standalone thriller in the vein of #1 bestsellers Hold Tight, Caught and Stay Close that explores the depth and passion of a 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 more than a decade, 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—and 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 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.