Sami hasn’t had the best luck. For a very long time.

A mysterious night in 2000 left him covered in blood and with no answers.

It’s 2025 and someone Sami thought was long dead. Maybe by his hand.

The chase is on.

I have every Coben book he has written and this one did not live up to the others. Lots of questions and I think I’m over the missing person plot.


NetGalley/ Grand Central Publishing March 25,2025

I'm a huge Harlan Coben fan from waaaaay back. The Myron Bolitar series is one of my all time favorites. This newest novel, Nobody's Fool, was a solid read. Definitely not up there with Coben's previous books, but a decent read as long as you aren't expecting any fireworks. The first half of the book moved a little slowly for me, but as soon as I hit midway through it definitely picked up. Loved the different characters. I had the "twist" figured out pretty early on, but again, a well-written, solid read. I can almost see this as a "limited series" of two-three books - again loved the characters, but not something that could be sustained long term.

Would recommend it.

Thank you #netgalley and #grandcentralpublishing for the eARC.

I would give this book a 3.5 star rating as the storyline was well developed, albeit a bit of a stretch at times, and the characters were colorful, interesting, and fun to follow. There were a number of twists and turns that kept the story well paced and intriguing. The ending was curious and I'm not sure how plausible parts of it were - I don't want to give anything away but I don't think the big twist is something that would fool everyone. I received an ARC for my honest review - many thanks to the Author, Publisher, and NetGalley for this opportunity.

Thanks for the early read opportunity. I've been reading Harlan Coben since his first book - Myron and Win are some of my favorite book characters. That being said, when I read this book, I kept wondering if Harlan really wrote this on.... I was disappointed. There was so little suspense, which is the BEST part of Harlan Coben's books. While I definitely didn't see the ending coming, I didn't feel like I was invested in finding out what happened so it was anticlimactic.

This won't stop me from reading more by him in the future, because he's got a great track record of awesome books.

Is it possible that when Sami Kierce was a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, he killed a girl he had fallen for five days earlier? He believes he must have.

Nobody's Fool begins with that premise and then jumps ahead 22 years. Sami has tried to put his life back together but what happened in Spain continues to color everything in his life. He chucked his plan to go to medical school, lost his job as a police officer, and is now working as a PI. The only good that has happened to him is meeting and marrying the love of his life and becoming a new father.

This is a difficult review to write without giving any of the twists and turns away! I believe I'm safe in saying I LOVED the wannabe sleuths Sami is teaching at night school!

I'm eager to see what happens in the next book!!

Thank you #GrandCentralPublishing for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. This book is #2 in the Sami Kierce series, and it has an expected publication date of March 25, 2025.

#HarlanCoben #Mystery #Suspense

Harlan Coben's "Nobody's Fool" is the second Detective Sami Kierce novel, following the events of "Fool Me Once." The story follows former detective Sami Kierce, who is now teaching night classes after being disgraced and removed from the New York police force.

The plot centers around a haunting incident from Kierce's past in Spain in 2000, where he woke up covered in blood next to his dead girlfriend Anna, with a knife in his hand. Twenty-five years later, while teaching a PI class called "No Shit, Sherlock," Kierce is shocked when a woman who appears to be the supposedly dead Anna walks into his classroom and then flees.

What makes this novel particularly engaging is Coben's masterful handling of complex plot twists and the introduction of an unlikely team of helpers - Kierce's criminology students, who bring both quirky humor and surprising investigative skills to the story.

The resolution is satisfying, and fans of the series will be hoping for more installments featuring Sami Kierce in the future. Once again, Coben proves why he's a master of the thriller genre.

This book was very well-written, and up to par with the rest of Harlan Coben’s great body of work. The main character is likeable, but also down-to-earth. He’s a real anti-hero, which is always fun. There are a lot of great secondary characters as well, who add a ton of color to the story. While the ending wasn’t what I predicted (and kept me on my toes) it wasn’t hard to follow when we got to where we were going. It was a creative way to wrap-up the story, and I could see the potential of a sequel down the road. I really enjoyed this one!

Coben has done it again. This book was so exciting I read it in one sitting. This is the sequel to " Fool me once" written in 2016. The story is set a year later as disgraced policeman Sami Kierce is scraping out a living. He is now married with a baby and personally happy.
The prologue has Sami right out of college, traveling with his friends when he meets a woman in Spain and instead of continuing on, stays with her. A big mistake.
25 years later he believes he sees her again. She shows up at a class he is teaching in criminology. The students in this class are a great bunch of characters who I hope to see again. Since he thought she was dead, he followers her out of the class with an important piece of detecting equipment.
What makes this book so good is the twists and turns Sami must go through to solve the mystery. I love the way Coben insinuates characters and storylines from previous books. In this book, a clue from his Micky Bolitar series is used. When that happens, the book takes a new turn and the story really takes off. I hope he doesn't wait another 9nyears to write another book in this series as I would love to revisit theses characters, especially Molly, his saint of a wife. I guess I will have to reread the first book.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the EARC. These are my honest opinions. I loved this book.

So good!

Mr. Coben has produced another great thriller. I didn’t read the first book, but the author skillfully brings the reader up to date without sounding like a tv recap. Every time that I thought I had figured it out, a new curve turned up. I enjoyed the writing, some of Sami’s lines/thoughts were really funny. I hope this gets made into a movie or series like some of his other books have been, it will be an instant “add to my stuff” for me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book, but my opinions are my own.

I was issued this book by NetGalley for my unbiased review.

As usual Harlan Coben has another great book. His hero, Sami Kierce, is just another of Coben"s group of characters. Sami is living a quiet life when he runs into a person from his past. From there the adventure begins. It is a fun ride, as usual in Harlan Coben books. Always look forward to reading the stories and Sami is another great addition.

20 plus years ago Sami Kierce is backpacking through Europe with his lacrosse brothers. One night he meets a girl in a club and decides to leave with her. He falls for her hard and tells his friends to go on without him. A few days later he wakes up to find himself covered in blood and the girl dead. He eventually decides to run a flees back to the states.

Today Sami Kierce is a private investigator after being let go from the police force after using unlawful techniques to convict someone for the murder of his fiancé Nicole several years ago. Due to these actions the person is ultimately let go and Sami wants to do everything to get him back behind bars. Meanwhile he is working to pay off his debts by teaching detective classes when one night someone appears at the back of the class and he swears it is the girl he thought was dead 22 years ago and he chases after her.

This leads him down a path on two cases and the more he investigates are the two related? Sami struggles mightily with his past and his present. He needs closure for what happened 22 years ago and works on behalf of a client to find out what happened to their missing daughter who was missing for 11 years and is the woman that shows up in his class.

Harlan Coben does a great job of keeping you guessing throughout this thriller and there are several twists along the way. Loved this book and all the twists and turn! Harlan Coben is a great author and keeps getting better with each book.

Thank you NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

#NobodysFool #NetGalley

Another great Harlan Coben Story!

I was first introduced to Harlan Coben through the limited series productions of his books. I was very excited to read an advanced copy of a new story from this author.

Like in all the stories, there are multiple story lines which all pull together in the end. It keeps you engaged from the beginning. The main character, an ex-police officer has a chance encounter with a woman from his past, a woman he thought he murdered. After tracking her down; he finds the real story is even more complicated than he could have ever of imagined.

I really loved the cast of characters in this book, particularly the students who pull together to help solve the crimes.

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for a complimentary advanced copy through NetGallery in exchange for an honest review.

This was a thriller with a new main character! In typical Coben fashion, you’re never quite sure where the mystery will end up. It was fast paced, kept my attention & fun.

Edit to add: apparently Sami isn’t new? He sure felt new. I have zero memory of him in the prior book. I guess I’ll just call this his origin story.

Just when I figure there’s no way Harlan Coben can conjure another amazing tale, he delivers Nobody’s Fool. Several unseemingly connected events occur, dredging up past events that form the bases of this story. Sami Kierce delays his start to medical school to backpack with friends through Europe when he falls for a gal he meets in a nightclub. He abandons the backpacking friends to stay with her. Until he awakes one morning to find a bloody knife in his hand and her dead in bed next to him. Fast forward twenty two years, having abandoned his medical school dreams, Sami is now a disgraced former detective picking up jobs as an investigator for a top law firm, and teaching an adult night school course on criminology. He carries the weight of a former police partner who was murdered, still hoping one day to solve that shooting. Then, when a mysterious woman appears in his classroom then runs away, he finds himself looking into a cold case of a young woman who went missing back in 2000. "The Truth may not set you free, but it is still the way to go."

With an interesting cast of characters, and his customary wit, Mr. Coben gives you a nonstop mystery with plenty of action and twists. If you’re a fan, or new to Harlan Coben, mark your calendar for its release on March 25. A big thanks to NetGalley for the advance review copy.

I never know where Harlen Coben is going to take me with his story. This is another one perfect for a Netflix mini series.

What happens when you look across a room and see a woman whom you are positive was dead when you woke up one morning—decades ago—and her body was lying next to you covered in blood? Well, this is a scenario that I have never found myself in, but it is par for the course in a Harlan Coben novel! Nobody’s Fool is just as good as every one of his books; there are characters struggling to understand the unexpected things that have happened, plenty of unsavory figures lurking around, and enough twists and turns to keep the story moving forward at a good clip. Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC and the opportunity to provide an honest review.

After college Sami Kierce is backpacking through Spain and meets Anna. They spend a few days together when Sami wakes up and finds Anna laying dead next to him and he is holding a knife. He flees back to the US. Fast forward 22 years to the present and Sami, now an ex detective, is teaching a class and one night sees a student who looks just like Anna. He chases after her and now wants answers.

Harlen Coben always does an excellent job writing page turners with characters that you really love. This was another great read. Wonderful subplots and storylines woven throughout this book. Satisfying ending with a setup for a follow up book.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Grand Central Publishing for the advance reader copy. Publication date March 25, 2025.

You might remember Sami Kierce from Harlan Coben's Fool Me Once, but probably not from the 2016 novel, where NYPD detective Roger Kierce has a tiny cameo. You're more likely to remember him from last year's UK-set limited series based on the Coben book, where he's an English detective named Sami of Pakistani descent with quite a complicated and tragic back story.

In an interesting move, Coben has brought back the version of Kierce that was created for the show rather than his own. He is still named Sami, he still has some of the same back story, especially the parts about having a murdered fiancée and about having fallen from grace with his mishandling of the Burkett case in Fool Me Once. But now he's American, a former NYPD detective.

In his youth, while backpacking through Europe, Sami hooked up with a girl named Anna in Spain. After a torrid affair, he woke up one morning to find her murdered in their bed, with a bloody knife in his hand. He flees back home. In the present day, Sami is married with a baby and is teaching a class on being a detective when Anna suddenly shows up, but then promptly turns and runs.

In chasing down the fleeing Anna, Sami discovers that she may actually be the daughter of a rich guy who had been missing for over a decade but then suddenly reappeared under mysterious circumstances. The identity of the kidnapper, indeed all details of the kidnapping, remain unsolved. Sami, considering the possible connection to Anna, pursues his own investigation into the matter.

This happens at the same time that the man who murdered his long-ago fiancée is released from the long prison sentence he received for that murder, due to Sami's mishandling of evidence. And another mysterious figure begins stalking Sami's wife. Enlisting the help of the amateur sleuths in his class, Sami has his hands full, and so do we, thanks to master plotter Harlan Coben.

Before making the connection to Fool Me Once, I actually began to think that the answer to this mystery was going to be the same, which I'm not going to specify for fear of spoilers. I'm not saying the answer actually is the same or isn't. I'm saying there are more connections to the prior novel than initially meet the eye, including a couple of extended cameos by the Burkett family not just as backstory but as part of this story.

I'd usually point to the plot twists that are Coben's specialties as reasons for liking this book so much, and sure enough, there are plenty of twists and turns here -- Occam is going to have to read to the end to discover whether his razor has any edge in figuring out these mysteries. And I'd often add that I love Coben's portrayal of the places where I grew up and spent my adult life (the former being North Jersey, the latter New York City).

In this case, what really hooked me were the characters. Even before recalling Sami Kierce from the TV version of Fool Me Once, where his expanded character proved to be popular among viewers, I liked him. His self-deprecating internal monologue, told in the first person, and his often inept quips and retorts (in contrast to Myron and Win) frame his character well.

His sleuthing students are fun too, in addition to being a great device (it doesn't feel original but I can't name a precursor). His former partner Marty (also a holdover from the Fool Me Once show), his wife, his lawyer, his antagonists -- in the type of story too often populated by cardboard cut-outs when handled by lesser writers, Coben infuses even minor characters with character.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Sometimes I have to apologize for being too honest in an honest review that is less than flattering. In this case, I have to emphasize that this is my honest review, not an attempt at being flattering.

After a disastrous mistake derails his police career, Sami Kierce becomes a private investigator, also teaching budding detectives from all walks of life. However, his past resurfaces when a woman he thought had died years ago reappears, stirring up old ghosts from his college days. Meanwhile, the man who was convicted of murdering Sami's wife is released from prison. As more questions arise and bodies pile up, Sami finds himself at the heart of a chilling mystery.

Sami first appears as a secondary character in Fool Me Once, though the two novels are largely standalone, so you can easily dive into this one without having read the first. In true Harlan Coben fashion, Nobody’s Fool delivers a fast-paced, gripping thriller, blending quirky but lovable characters, heart-pounding suspense, and a mind-bending twist you won’t see coming.

This book kept me hooked from the very beginning partially because it was doing SO much. A murdered fiancé, a murdered summer fling, a disgraced police detective. The main storyline with the Belmond family’s missing daughter was executed flawlessly and I’m eager to see how Coben will proceed, since he made it pretty clear in the last pages that the story isn’t over. I loved the way Kierce used his students as an investigative team- that could be fun as more of a focus in the next book. However, the author was juggling a few too many plot lines for it to be as effective a conclusion as I always hope for in a thriller. The other mystery involving Kierce’s murdered fiancé felt extraneous to the story. One other gripe I have is that while it’s not absolutely necessary to have read Fool Me Once to understand this book, the context for the Burkett family that comes from Fool Me Once would have been helpful. Overall, a really fun, fast-paced, and suspenseful thriller with a really likable protagonist.