Any time that I see a new release from Harlan Coben it is cause for celebration. I know that I will lose sleep until I have read the last page. Nobody’s Fool opens with Sami Kierce as a recent college graduate touring through Europe before entering medical school. Meeting Anna in a Spanish night club changes his life. After days of partying he wakes up next to her lifeless body with a bloody knife in his hand. When he reports the death to the police, the body is gone and there is no evidence of a crime. With his life turned upside down, he forgoes medical school and joins the police. Later disgraced and terminated for skirting the rules, he supports his wife Molly and infant son by conducting investigations for a law firm and teaching a night course in criminology. He is stunned one evening when Anna enters his class. Trailing her to an estate in Connecticut, he discovers that her real name is Victoria Belmont, an heiress who disappeared for eleven years and has no memory of the time. Sami is the only person with a connection to Victoria during her disappearance and is hired by the family to fill in that gap.

Sami may have started as a naive student, but now he is a seasoned investigator. He never told Molly his whole story about Spain, but there is love and mutual respect in their relationship and she trusts him. His class is filled with would-be investigators, so he makes this assignment a group project. It is an odd group that is eager to offer help. Coben throws constant twists and surprises at Sami. Beginning with Anna’s supposed death, there are threats against Sami and his family, scammers, human trafficking and murders. Coben will keep you glued to the pages until Sami finally discovers the truth and proves that he is nobody’s fool. I would like to thank NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for providing this book.

This is a gripping tale about a man haunted by a past incident. Back in his early twenties, during a romantic escapade in Spain, he woke up to find a dead girl beside him. Choosing to keep the incident a secret, his past comes rushing back when he unexpectedly spots the girl, very much alive, while teaching a night class. Recognizing her immediately reignites a complex web of emotions and mysteries.

Harlan Coben masterfully weaves together various storylines, creating a deeply engaging narrative. The characters are well-developed, and the plot twists are both surprising and satisfying. "Nobody's Fool" has proven to be one of the best books I've read in 2025, thanks to its creativity and the compelling way Coben stitches together the different elements of the story.

This one was just…..okay.

I actually contemplating dnfing a few times - mostly from boredom. I normally fly through Coben’s work but for this one I didn’t really find myself invested in the story, causing it to drag for me.

Overall I was underwhelmed, and when I got to the end I was satisfied with how it was tied up but also like wow, this is how I spent my time? Just felt disappointed by this one. Three stars because it was tidily written and wrapped up, and I’m sure there are fans who will eat it up. Just wasn’t for me.

Harlan Coben’s one-of-kind wit sets this thriller apart. Features his trademark twists and emotional resonance. Coben manages to remain relevant and each book is, in fact, better than the last. Love the band of misfit sleuths!

Harlan Coben knows how to reel in his readers in just the first few pages and keep them hooked until the very end. This is book #2 in this series but this one can be read as a standalone without missing a beat.

The story opens with a bang. Sami Kierce, a twenty-something college grad wakes up next to the bloodied body of his girlfriend. And the stunner? He’s holding a knife. Now it’s two decades later and this event from his past has come back to taunt him along with another tragedy. Needing answers to both events, Sami races to find the truth at all costs.

This heart-thumping, fast-paced thriller had me hooked until the very end. I have never been disappointed reading a Harlan Coben book and this time is no different. I would pick up any book he writes.

Thank you to NetGalley, Grand Central Publishing and Harlan Coben for an early digital copy and this exhilarating ride.

Harlan Coben knows how to write a twisty thriller! This is book #2 in his new Sami Kierce series. Sami was once a NYC police officer. He's now a disgraced NYC police officer, a private detective and a new father, doing whatever it takes to make ends meet and support his family. His bad judgement from 20+ years ago comes back to haunt him. He recognizes an old lover who he thought was dead and the chase is on to find out the truth. Just when you think Harlan Coben couldn't write anything better, he comes up with this one. You won't find out the truth until the end and I'm sure not going to tell it! I don't know how you do it, Harlan! Now I need to go back and read book #1. My thanks to Harlan Coben, Grand Central Publishing and Net Galley for the ARC and the highly enjoyable read.

It may be hard to believe, since I read so much, but Nobody’s Fool is only my second book by Harlan Coben. Given that he’s written SO many books, it truly surprised me. Anyway… Nobody’s Fool was a very engaging mystery and I’m glad I read/listened to it!

Sami Kierce is the main character, a former NYPD detective who was forced out of the department due to problematic behavior in a couple of cases. So he’s scrambling to make a living for himself, his wife and baby son, by taking on various low-level private investigations, such as surveilling cheating husbands. He also teaches a sort of adult education detective class on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. That class is filled with a wide variety of “interesting” people. I loved that Sami referred to them mostly by nicknames, such as Gary The Golfer, Leisure Suit Lenny, and a few women he calls the Pink Panthers. (It actually helped me remember who was who, as opposed to just a list of names.) I really enjoyed Sami; he has a good sense of humor and it was a nice change of pace to read a main character who grew up in New Jersey of Pakistani heritage.

The book opens with some scenes from 20-odd years earlier, when he was backpacking in Europe with some of his college buddies (whom he refers to as the “lax bros”, i.e. lacrosse players), before starting med school. In Spain he meets and has a brief affair with a young woman named Anna. The publisher’s blurb gives this away, so it isn’t a spoiler: he wakes up next to Anna, who is dead and he’s holding a bloody knife! He runs, basically. And he never goes to med school; instead he becomes a police officer.

Fast forward those 20-odd years and a woman shows up at his class and he just knows it’s Anna, older of course. When she turns and runs instead of talking to him, he follows her. Most of the book involves figuring out how Anna could still be alive. I enjoyed how some of his more promising students helped him in this effort. Another thread is the release from prison of a man he helped convict, a man he believes killed his then-fiancee. Because of his checkered past, his lawyer has gotten that guy out of prison.

I mostly listened to the audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Vikas Adam. I sped through this book, not wanting to stop listening.

If you enjoy a fast-paced thriller with some good twists and great local atmosphere, check out Nobody’s Fool.

Thank you to Hachette Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook and to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

If you are Nobody's Fool, pick up this pulse-pounding thriller where the jaw-dropping twists keep coming until the surprising conclusion.

Sami has had a string of bad luck beginning with a college vacation in Spain that went horribly wrong. Now, someone featured in his nightmares appears in his night class and just as abruptly vanishes. Meanwhile, a man he sent to jail sixteen years earlier for murdering his partner is released from jail due to Sami’s poor police work. Why are two mistakes from his past rising back to the surface now? Are they related? How will Sami protect his wife and their young son from these threats?

I loved Nobody's Fool. It had so many twists that were like a gut punch. The sizzling conclusion was a complete surprise but made the inexplicable actions of many of the characters so much clearer. I enjoy all of Mr. Coben’s thrillers but this book was one of his best. 5 stars and a favorite!

Thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for providing me with an advanced review copy.

"Nobody's Fool" is a terrific read. In fact, too terrific: I meant it as a nighttime read, and it was so suspenseful that it got in the way of my work. I truly had trouble putting it down. After the fact, I thought that there were some elements that seemed implausible or not fully explained, but in propelled me along and drew me in, and I found the characters complex and persuasive. I've already been recommending it as a first-rate thriller.

🃏”Nobody’s Fool” - Harlan Coben 🃏

Genre: Thriller;Mystery
Setting: New York City, present day
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Detective Sami Kierce and his misfit criminology class set out to solve a cold case, when Sami spots a woman from his past that he presumed dead. As the mystery unravels, Sami and his friends find skeletons in closets all across the globe, uncovering much more than they excepted to.

I really enjoyed Coben’s writing. The characters were all well thought out and developed. I felt personally attached to both Victoria and Anna and I was desperate to find out what happened to them. The plot made sense and kept me guessing. There were lots of twists and turns that I did not see coming. I also enjoyed that the ending wrapped things up nicely and did not leave you guessing.

There was a lot about this novel that could have been flushed out - especially the quirky side characters. They could have their own spin off someday.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a thriller that will leave you on the edge of your seat wanting more.

📢 Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for this early copy in exchange for my honest review.

🏷️ #grandcentralpublishing #nobodysfool #harlancoben #arcreview #bookreview #bookstagram #thriller #readmorebooks #tbr #deathbytbr #mystery #netflix

Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben is a police procedural led by a man, Sami Kierce, who was no longer a policeman. He had been asked to leave because of behavior outside police procedures. He deserved it; he often did not think before he acted. He did a variety of things to keep his family safe, including teaching a class on sleuthing, to which he had a cadre of regulars. One night someone slipped in he didn’t recognize, until he did. He had known her twenty years earlier when he had been just out of college and on a trek across Europe. He had woken up one day to find her dead body next to him and a knife in his hand. In a panic he ran to the police. When he finally convinced one to return to the apartment with him, nothing was there. He called his father who advised him to get a flight out to the United States immediately. It didn’t matter where. Now, here she was. The sharing that night had been about surveillance devices and he had one in his hand which he stuck in her pocket as she rushed away. Where that led him is almost beyond belief.

Her family was rich; very rich. He was turned away, aggressively, by security, so was interested when his lawyer called him with an interesting proposal from them. He went, and the Arthur, the lawyer, was waiting for him. That started an investigation that lead in and around many things in his past. It involved his dead partner who had also been his fiancee; his wife and son; a kidnapping and return to the family eleven years later; as well as all kinds of other twists and turns. What a good book. It is the first Coben book I have read and I am asking myself, “Why?” Sami was an interesting character with a backstory and a current story, and stories in between. The plot was complex and well-thought-out. The assistance Sami received from a variety of people was heart-warming. And the conclusion and the after-conclusion where both things no one had seen coming. What a good book!

I was invited to read Nobody’s Fool by Grand Central Publishing. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #GrandCentralPublishing #HarlanCoben #NobodysFool

I'll never get tired of a book by Harlan Coben. We were introduced to Sami Kierce in a previous novel, but I don't feel like you had to have read that book to get into this one. A past traumatic experience comes back to Sami when he believes he recognizes a girl from his past. While teaching his class, she is spotted in the back, sneaking out after making eye contact with Sami. Sami begins exploring and investigating if this person is who he believes she is, even instilling the help of a group of his students. You will be surprised at where this story takes you. While it seems like it might be predictable, Harlan Coben always takes us the long way around to closure, with a surprise here and there, threading life and humanity into his writing and characters!

First of all, I don't think you need to read Fool Me Once before reading this one. Kierce is such a minor character in that one you won't be missing anything. Nobody's Fool is a better book anyway. The mystery is complex yet somehow believable and the side characters are unforgettable. Since this is a series, I hope we get more involving the students in his little criminology class. I would love to know more of their back stories.

This is my third Harlan Coben novel and the second one where someone says, "Himmler likes tuna steaks." I can't tell if this is a cultural reference I'm not picking up on or some sort of Easter egg Coben wrote in. There were a couple of other objects or descriptions that were reused which gave me an odd sort of deja-vu while reading. Again, not sure if that was intentional or if Coben unintentionally reuses descriptions. It probably isn't noticeable unless you read his books in rapid succession, like I plan to continue doing.

Harlan Coben brings us a second novel starring Sami Kierce, a former Manhattan detective who lost his job because of inappropriate approaches to his investigations. I really enjoyed the plot, characters and writing in this novel. Coben never disappoints, but this time, he wowed me! Sami graduated from a prestigious private school where he was a scholarship student, then a prestigious college and is accepted to medical school. He is heading on a summer backpacking trip with very well-off friends from high school, having deferred his entry to medical school. While in Spain, he falls for Anna, a woman he meets in a bar, and they have a vacation fling that feels kind of serious to Sami. It ends badly and changes the entire trajectory of Sami's life.

Sami's first fiancé, another police officer, was murdered twenty years earlier. Thanks to his termination from the force, her convicted killer is being released based on Sami's conflict of interest in working on the investigation and assertions of wrongdoing. He is happily married, deeply in debt, has an infant son and works as a private investigator. He also teaches a pay as you go weekly class on crime solving, with each week's theme based on a Sherlock Holmes quote placed on the blackboard.

The class members are a hodgepodge of older women who try to solve cold cases online, an obviously wealthy guy who obviously plays golf, a woman Sami uses in some of his divorce investigations who is very poor and the unhoused, unhinged man she gives a sandwich each night. Three influencer type women round out the class, which has grown in recent weeks from a much smaller attendance rate. One night, twenty years after he last saw Anna, a woman stops in the doorway of his class and Sami is convinced it is Anna. This starts him on the road to finding out where she seems to live, who owns the well guarded mansion she apparently lives in, a cold case mystery surrounding the kidnapping of a daughter of the house, and just in general, Remi's getting involved when he shouldn't. Simultaneously, since his fiancé's alleged murderer was not pardoned, he might get retried. Sami wants to find new proof to nail him, but it's looking like they got the wrong guy.

In a great spirited move, Remi engages his most talented students in an advanced version of his course, kind of an adult group of Baker Street Irregulars. There is a definite need to follow the bouncing ball in the two very much fun and sometimes scary investigations. The ending was a great surprise but the clues were there. The characters were a lot of fun. The writing was Coben at his best which is the best!

Wasn’t able to read this one digitally but I did order a copy of the book so will be reviewing it after I’ve read it. I’m really excited for it as I’ve only heard great things about it.

I was new to the Sami Kierce series but love that coming in at book two didn't affect the story. Sami is a former detective who lives in New York and is currently teaching a class on sleuthing as well as working as a private investigator. However, being removed from the police force isn't the only story from Sami's past. He had gone to Spain when he was getting ready to go to college. He was backpacking with friends and met a young woman named Anna. They hit it off and he thought he was falling in love tell he woke up covered in blood and she was dead. Sami called his Dad and came straight home to be forever haunted by not knowing what had truly happened to Anna and if he was responsible for killing her as he was drinking and doing a ton of drugs when they were hanging out. Twenty two years later while he is teaching his group of sleuths she walks into the class and leaves. Sami chases after and the story begins of what really happened twenty two years ago. This was a great read and story. I am a huge fan of Harlan Coban and can't wait for the next Sami book in the series.

I was not expecting to fall in love with this book more than Fool Me Once, but I did! The story follows Sami Kierce, whose past never truly stays in the past. His journey begins during his backpacking trip to Europe, where he encounters the infamous Anna. A series of unexpected events leads Sami down his current path. Twenty plus years later, everything comes to a head in a whirlwind of events. This story kept me enthralled and compelled me to discover the ending. Trust me, the ending will not disappoint.

The first thing I would say about Nobody's Fool is that, although it says it is set ' a year after the devastating events that took place in Fool Me Once', this is not a continuation of the story from Fool Me Once so it can easily be read as a standalone.

The story does follow Detective Sami Kierce, now disgraced former police officer, who can currently be found teaching wannabe private detectives in a local community college. One night during class, Sami sees a woman at the door who quickly flees and Sami is convinced it is the same woman, Anna, who he met in Spain as a teenager. However, Sami woke up one morning next to Anna in Spain and she was quite clearly dead! So, who is this person he has just seen? And to complicate matters further, Sami receives unwelcome news about the killer of his former partner who is currently in prison.

Coben is an author who never disappoints me and I was delighted to read his latest novel. Sami Kierce is a brilliant, but flawed, character who you will find yourself rooting for throughout this novel as he attempts to deal with two significant changes in his life. Coben weaves both stories perfectly towards a dramatic and stunning conclusion.

Although the book concludes perfectly, Coben leaves a brilliant teaser for what is sure to be a third Kierce novel and I cannot wait!

Another hit from Mr. Coben. I must confess that I am a sucker for the Myron Bolitar series. This is the second book featuring Sami Kierce. While I enjoyed it, it doesn’t rank up there with my favorites. But until Mr. Coben goes the way of James Patterson, I will probably read everything that he writes. Thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

This book releases in March. This was soooo good! An ex cop turned PI teaches an investigations class to a group of characters and during one class a lady returns from his past. He is determined to figure out who she is and what happened in the time that has passed since they last saw each other. This would honestly make a GREAT tv show. I thought the characters were all great and even though there are a lot of people to keep up with it never felt too hard or complicated. Just a great story. And if you’ve read any of Steve Cavanaugh’s books about Eddie Flynn you will love this one!