Sami Kierce, once a police detective, now works for a law firm after being forced to leave the profession he loved. He also teaches a criminology course that attracts true crime fans. Back in 2000, while in Spain, Sami fell for Anna. One morning, he woke up to find a knife in his hand and Anna covered in blood. He called the police and quickly returned to the U.S. never learning what happened. All these years later, while teaching his class, he is convinced that he sees Anna in the audience. When their eyes meet, she flees, and Sami is determined to track her down. As he seeks to uncover the truth about this woman from his past, the man convicted of killing his fiancée has been released from prison because of errors made by Sami. 

We were introduced to Sami Kierce in Harlan Coben's novel Fool Me Once, which was made into a Netflix series. In Nobody's Fool, Coben has brought back this smart, appealing character who is helped by a team of his best and brightest students. The book is fast-paced and filled with tension, providing some great twists. It's clever, often witty, and thrilling to read. For those from the New York metro area, the locations Coben mentions should bring a smile.

One of the best Harlan Coben books I've read! When I started reading Nobody's Fool, I wasn't sure it was going to be my type of book. All of a sudden, the story took on a life of it's own and I was hanging on to Kierce's coattails along for the ride.

I'm leery of giving away too much of the plot to avoid future readers discovering the truth. I'll conclude my review by stating that the book's twists and turns hold up until the final page.

Another sensational novel and it will definitely be a favourite for me this year.
A year after the devastating events in his previous investigation, former Detective Sami Kierce is back. This time, a ghost from the past has appeared, from his college days. While backpacking with friends in Spain, young college graduation, Sami, meets a girl and they spend five days together. But then one morning he wakes covered in blood. A knife in his hand. His girlfriend Anna is dead. Twenty-two years later, Kierce is now a private investigator, married and a new father. He teaches sleuths at night and during one of those night courses, he sees her, Anna. But it can't be, because Anna died all those years ago. And the mystery begins.

As with all of the author's novels, this one was fast moving, compelling and so twisted! The mystery of Anna completely fooled me and there were some great reveals that kept me flying through the pages. I love the way the author connected the past and present events and fit the numerous pieces of the puzzles together.

Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben follows detective Sami Kierce as he is dropped into another mystery—this time with a very personal component for him. This book has such a strong voice, which effectively gets you into the mind of the protagonist. This is never distracting, but helps to create momentum as he’s trying to solve a mystery that is important to him.

There are many twists and turns throughout, making the story thrilling to read. The plot never becomes convoluted, ensuring that the story remains easy to follow. In Nobody’s Fool, we also meet many of Kierce’s colorful associates, who bring a lot of fun to this book.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced mystery filled with flawed characters and complex motivations, consider checking out Nobody’s Fool.

I am a big fan of Harlan Coben. This book does not disappoint his fans despite being a little slow at the beginning. This is a stand alone novel but is about former detective Sami Kierce from a previous book. This book introduces Sami as a college student backpacking with friends through Spain. He meets a girl abandoning his friends for her. He wakes up one morning in her bed covered in blood with a knife in his hand. There is no body though. As per his father's instructions he rushes home to the US and go on with his life.
Fast forward 22 years later and he sees the woman who he supposedly killed in his classroom.She quickly disappears again His quest to find her again. is very exciting and clever.
A must read for fans of Harlan Coben.

OMG!!! My head is about to explode after reading “Nobody’s Fool.” There were so many twist and turns. The LIES and manipulation.

Sami is teaching his Criminology night class when a face he remembers over 20 years ago stares back at him. The face of Anna who he spent time with in Spain. Sami wakes up one morning to Anna dead lying beside him with a knife wound to the chest. He doesn’t remember a thing because of the alcohol and drug consumption from the night before.

If Anna was dead then how can she be sitting with his other students and staring back at him. When she catches Sami looking back at her it’s at that moment she bolts from the class and out the building.

You really have to read this one for yourself. I was no where near piecing this story together. In my opinion, it’s what makes Harlan Coben one of the great story tellers.

Harlan Coben does it again. First, I have to say I’m a long time reader of Harlan’s so my expectations are always high when I read one of his new books, and this one did not disappoint. This book is #2 in the series but can be read as a standalone. Sami is teaching classes now after stepping down from his police role when he sees a familiar face from his past, only it can’t be true because last he saw her, she was dead.

This story takes you on a heart pounding, page turning ride, like all of Coben’s books. I read it in less than 24 hours. His characters are always well developed and his stories always have a great plot line with those mind blowing twists throughout. This was easily a 5 star read for me!

While backpacking through Spain after his college graduation, Sami Kierce meets a beautiful girl at a club... Anna.. Rather than continuing with his friends, Sami stays back a few days with Anna. One morning he awakens c9vered in blood with a knife in his hands and Anna is dead.
Fast forward 22 Yeats. Now a disgraced detective, Sami is teaching a night class to wannabe sleuths and odd job surveillance work. One evening he recognizes someone in his class . It's Anna... through twists and turns Sami soon come face to face with the truth about about his past.

4.5 Fool Me Twice stars

I just finished the first one in this series (Fool Me Once) and it was a good introduction to the main character in this one, Sami Kierce. In the first book, he was a police detective, but now he’s a PI, having been removed from the force after a case went in a bad direction. (I would like a book about that case!)

Much of this one deals with a week of Sami’s life when he was in college, backpacking through Europe with lacrosse friends. He meets a gorgeous woman at a club and spends several wonderful days with her. Then, horribly, one morning, he wakes up with the woman covered in blood next to him and a knife in his hands. He hightails it back to the US and tries to put it behind him.

Now, 25 years later, he thinks he sees the woman from those days in Spain. How can that be, though? Wasn’t she dead?

Sami teaches night classes on criminology, and I loved this part of the book. The class is made up of eclectic wanna-be detectives. Sami ends up putting them on his cases, and it even becomes competitive that he wants to solve the case before his class does.

A wealthy family hires him to find out what happened during their daughter’s missing years, and Sami must reconcile his past. With lots of twists and turns (and coincidences!), this one kept me guessing. Yes, I was fooled again! I’m excited to have rediscovered this author.

Sometimes the past refuses to stay…well, in the past.
Sami was off to Europe, one last carefree moment before starting med school. But when he wakes up in Spain covered in blood with a dead girl next to him, his life path will be forever changed.

Twenty years later Sami finds himself no longer interested in becoming a physician. Instead, he’s teaching a course in investigations to a group of misfits and wannabes. And while he did pursue a career as a police officer, that too is very much behind him.

But during one of his classes he sees a women who instantly takes him back to his dark past, twenty years ago.

It can’t be! It’s that girl from Spain!

Soon Sami will choose to open pandora’s box, desperately searching for answers to close that horrific chapter in his life and move on. Oh Sami, haven’t you heard, sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Loved Sami’s character. He reminded me so much of Harlan Coben’s other famous character, Myron Bolitar with his fun, sarcastic humor.

Apparently this is book two of a series. And according to my GR booklist I didn’t read book one. Not sure how that could be! Harlan Coben is one of my favorite authors and I could’ve sworn I read everything he’s released. But by the time I realized it, I was too far in and enjoying this latest so much I couldn’t have stopped!

So in other words, this book can very much stand on its own!

Will I go back and read book one Fool Me Once? Of course! It’s Harlan Coben‼️I already have it queued up on my kindle!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing

Title: Nobody’s Fool
Series: Detective Sami Kierce #2
Author: Harlan Coben
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Pub Date: March 25, 2025
My Rating: 3.5
Pages 352

Detective Sami Kierce's college days comes back to haunt him

I met Sami Kierce in [book: Fool Me Once] . He was born and raised in New Jersey, and his parents are from Pakistani heritage. Sami is fluent in Spanish and a bit of rule-bender when it comes to seeking justice.
When Sami graduate college about twenty-years ago, he went on a trip to Spain and met Anna
He wakes up and finds Anna dead and he has a knife in his hand. It seems she was killed by her jealous ex-lover but sure doesn’t look that way!

Fast forward a few years and Sami Kierce is an ex-New York cop teaching when Anna turns up in one of his classes, and of course quickly disappears

Now Sami is now dealings with court cases, without pay. Taking photos of cheating spouses.

He is married to Molly and they have a baby son, Henry. Additionally he is teaching a course in
criminology on the Lower East Side, training amateur sleuths.

Author, Harlan Coben is without a doubt one of my “fav” authors. This is novel #35 for me! I went into this expecting his clever wit and storytelling but have to admit it wasn’t exactly like reading a typical Harlan Coben that I know and love. Perhaps I was expecting another Myron Bolitar however Sami is Sami and not Myron!
I know Coben is a great story teller and doesn’t disappoint. So I needed to hang in there.

Want to thank NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for March 25, 2025.

A wonderful twisty thriller. Characters are well developed and easy to relate to. Book really held my attention. Enjoyed seeing characters from Fool Me Once.

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for granting me early access to “Nobody’s Fool" in exchange for my honest review.

The story revolves around Sami Kierce, a former detective whose past resurfaces unexpectedly. In 2000, while backpacking in Malaga, Sami wakes up next to the body of a woman named Anna, covered in blood and holding a knife. He has no memory of what happened. Fast forward to 2025, Sami is teaching criminology in New York City when he spots Anna in his class. After their eyes meet, she runs, prompting Sami to investigate the long-buried mystery.

At first, I will admit that I was considering DNFing the book due to a slow start, as not much was happening in the beginning. However, halfway through, the book began to pick up, and I couldn’t put it down. I was not expecting the ending, and I’m still reflecting on how skillfully Harlan tied the story together. I also loved the sprinkle of a cliffhanger that hopefully promises a future installment in the series!

Thank you to NetGalley, Harlan Coben and Grand Central Publishing for allowing me the opportunity to read this book prior to publication. Harlan Coben never disappoints!

I am a big Harlan Coben fan. This was one of his best books. He introduced all new characters who were skillfully developed. The plot kept me engaged. He included plenty of unexpected twists and turns. I highly recommend it. I thank NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben
Detective Sami Kierce #2

Before I read this book, I read Fool Me Once since that book first introduces several characters present in this second book. The most prominent recurring character is former Detective Sami Kierce. Now Sami is a private investigator due to several incidents that got him kicked off the police force. Policing/detecting is too much a part of Sami now and that's why he continues that type of work even if he's mostly on his own.

I like Sami, he identifies everyone in a class he teaches with a description and that made the huge number of characters easy for me to remember. Pretty much anyone he sees can get a description as an identifier but we also will see characters from the first book that I already know by their real names. As the story goes on we get to see just how interwoven the two stories are but I think this book will be very easy to follow even if you don't read the first book.

So much goes on and maybe there are a lot of coincidences or else it's just my brain that got tied into a big knot keeping track of things. Even so, it was fun trying to figure out what was going on and by the end of the book we get some helpful explanations which I needed to untangle my thoughts.

Sami is funny, he's a good guy, his clever wife Molly helps to guide him and he values her judgement and advice. He's also a loving and hands on dad, when he can be at home. Everything going on here kept Sami very busy but an interesting aspect of the book is that he'll send out a call to his best students and other friends when he needs some help with following, detecting, and solving. I can see the opportunity for a lot more crime solving with this group. Reading this book with DeAnn and Mary Beth made for some great discussion.

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC.

Another great book by Harlan Coben. This book was particularly hard to get started. It definitely started out as a slow burn because it was hard to keep all the stories correctly connected. I had a hard time figuring out how everything was connected. Once I was able to figure that out, the story fell into place. Just enough twists and turns to keep it interesting while also not allowing the reader to figure everything out. Some of the smaller twists turned into bigger twists, but not till later. Love that it ended with the possibility of another hook and book needed.

Simply unputdownable. Harlan Coben has done it again. With an exceptional way of building characters that you love, he draws you into the world of Sami Kierce, the detective we all grew to love in Fool Me Once, as he works to unravel a traumatic mystery from his past.

We find Sami putting his life back together after he leaves the police force disgraced. He's teaching a class on crime for a rag-tag group of armchair detectives and true crime enthusiasts when he spots a woman from his past. One he thought was dead.

The pursuit to find this woman, solve the mystery from his past, and possibly his own guilt, lead us on journey filled with clues. And in true Harlan Coben form - you don't even realize you've been stepping all over the clues until the very end.

No one can weave a story like Coben and Sami's wit and humor had me both laughing and turning the page as fast as I could until I reached the 90% read mark when I finally realized what was going on and didn't want the story to end.

Not only does Nobody's Fool give us a great mystery to solve but it sprinkles in some tough questions for us to consider along the way. Like, how far would you go to protect your child?

Harlan Coben never disappoints when it comes to delivering a fast-paced, engaging read. His novels always hook me right from the start, and this one was no exception. There are mystery nuggets scattered throughout the story, keeping me guessing and flipping pages quickly.

What stood out the most were the raw emotions in each character. They felt real, relatable, and deeply human. As a parent, Archie’s story hit me the hardest. His emotions, his choices—I kept asking myself, *What would I do if I were in his shoes?* That kind of emotional pull is what makes Coben’s writing so compelling.

If you’re looking for a quick read with suspense, emotional depth, and characters that feel authentic, this book is definitely worth picking up.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for their generosity in allowing me to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating 3/5⭐️

Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Cohen is a crime procedural following Sami Kierce an ex-cop who was removed from the force after he was found to have been lax with some rules. He is now running a criminology class where he swears he sees a woman he met 25 years ago in Spain for one summer.

This is a part of a series but can be read as a standalone.

I really enjoyed the characters. I think that they were all really well done and all added something to the story. Sami and Molly’s relationship is just the sweetest and relationship goals.

The tone of the writing is very interesting as it seems like Sami is talking directly at us and allowing us to be involved in the plot as if we were there.

I will say however that it was slow paced for me and I was able to guess a lot of the twists fairly easily. It didn’t really make my heart race or keep me on the edge of my seat. I love his writing though and will continue to pick up more of his novels.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review.