Rating: 
Summary: A TERRIFIC LISTEN
Review: What can a woman do when her world is suddenly turned upside down, when everything and everyone once safe is now imperiled? That's the question posed by bestselling author Harlan Cohen in his latest thriller, "Just One Look." Coben's not a newbie at the game of suspense having taken home an Edgar Award, the Shamus Award, and the Anthony Award. His tales are complexly plotted and compelling as attested to by "No Second chance" and "Gone For Good." He packs a knock-out punch and leaves readers wanting more. Speaking of knock-out punches - two more are delivered by able readers. Carolyn McCormick, who delivers the abridged version, has multiple stage, screen and TV appearances to her credit. She's the voice of a woman pushed to the edge to protect her children. A singer and spoken-word performer, Carrington MacDuffie, voice of the unabridged editions brings a wide range of vocal experience to her performance, imbuing it with passion and pathos. With "Just One Look" listeners meet Grace Lawson who has picked up a recently developed set of family snapshots. She's surprised to find one photo that she doesn't fully recognize - there are five people in the photo, one of whom appears to be her husband. Where did this picture apparently taken some 20 years ago come from? Her husband, Jack, denies any knowledge of the snapshot saying he's not the man in it. Yet, late that night he drives off with the photograph. There is no note for Grace who has no idea where he went or why he left. As the days pass she finds no help from the police or friends. Yet, it becomes increasingly obvious that she is not the only one looking for Jack. Unknown others pursue him as Grace searches for answers, any answers in order to protect her children. "Just One Look" is Harlan Coben at the height of his powers - a terrific listen.
Rating: 
Summary: Second-rate Coben
Review: I agree with Eric's review - Gone For Good and Tell No One were the sort of great books that keep you reading until 3am. Just One Look is in a different (lesser) league. Terrific beginning, then it all goes downhill.The plot doesn't really make sense, and I've read far too many crime novels where the hero or heroine happens to have a Mafia boss on tap to help them out when the going gets rough (I'm thinking of the Spenser novels in particular). Grace was a pleasant enough character but the endless stuff about how much she loved her kids, what they ate, what they wore, what they were reading and so on got very tedious. And is it just me or are his folksy little authorial asides (er, um) becoming really irritating? This is a harsh review, because a new Harlan Coben is still a treat. But this is really not that great.
Rating:
Summary: One look only
Review: Having seen Harlan Coben's name on the covers of novels for years, I finally broke down and decided to read one. Unfortunately, I didn't pick the right one to start with. JOL starts out well enough. There is a good mystery, and it definitely keeps you interesting. Then things start to unravel. The truth starts coming out, and bit by bit the story starts becoming more far-fetched. By the time this one is over, you'll be sitting there scratching your head and wondering why your name was left out of this book...after all, everyone else in the world was apparently in on this deception. The closest I can come to explaining this is a soap opera. As the end was revealed, it was like "Your brother-in-law's second cousin's third wife's stepmother was married to my twice-removed uncle's niece's third child's grandson". It was just too far out to be real. I love a complex story as much as the next guy, but even the most complex plot needs to have SOME grounding in reality--unless it's a Dean Koontz or Stephen King kind of thing. This one just stretchs the believability too far.
Rating: 
Summary: Blind Dates and Lack of Emotion
Review: Reading a book can be like going on a blind date. The air is full of questions, and, as you lay eyes on that first page, you may find yourself only mildly intrigued or full-tilt attracted. My first blind date with a Coben novel left me head over heels. I loved the pacing, the intricate plot, and most of all the attention to family and relationship. "Gone for Good" and "Tell No One" were masterpieces of suspense. "No Second Chance" felt a bit more contrived, but I still enjoyed it throughout. "Just One Look" is full of suspense, no doubt about it. The plot unfolds in all the right places. The characters react as might be expected. Yet, I felt as though I was taking apart a music box that had been robbed of its melody. Coben's family rhythms and song seemed muted. The plausibility of the scenario was strained. Sure, I was entranced by Grace's search to discover the truth behind her husband's disappearance and a decades-old photo, but I was not emotionally invested. That said, Coben is a master of the serpentine mystery. My love for his writing is steadfast. Next time around though, I hope his characters have a little more time to look me in the eye and draw me into their world. In this book-dating scenario, for me, it's all about relationship.
Rating:
Summary: Not Coben's Best
Review: Harlan Coben is one of my favorite authors, but this is not his best. The story never engages the reader, and perhaps even more annoying, are all the typos in the book. A few typos would be understandable, but 30-plus is unexcusable in a major novel. The typos start in the book's second sentence ("stuck in that the (sic) lull when the music first starts...") , and continue throughout the book up to the third-to-last page ("I know all about it. I've seen in it (sic) lots of cases.") and second-to-last page ("He didn't go [] (sic) the concert"). Even in spots where the book starts to mount some suspense, the appearance of yet another typo yanks the reader out of the book and ruins the suspense. It almost seems like the uncorrected proof got published as a hardcover. (Harlan, get a new copy editor!!!) I can only hope that his next book will be better.
Rating: 
Summary: I agree with Skip It--This one is awful
Review: I have enjoyed all of Coben's work but this one certainly had me wondering what kind of changes success is making in his attitudes. I couldn't decide who he had more contempt for: his own characters or me as the reader. This story was contrived, unbelievable, and unsatisfying. His tacked on surprise ending casting Grace in a dark role in her own tragedy was distasteful to say the least. His careless and senseless killing off of one person after another was even more so. The truth certainly didn't set any of these people free, everyone in the story was left inpoverished and diminished, and for what? All in all the whole story just left me with a very bad taste in my mouth.
Rating:
Summary: Just One Look
Review: Harlan Corben is at it again, Just One Look will keep you turning the pages into the night, A photo picked up at a photomat by his wife with her husbands picture in it. But what was he doing in the picture that would make him disappear after looking at it? The hunt takes place by a wife that not only wants her husband back but wants to know why he ran. Later she finds out about a kidnapped person that just happens to be her husband and the plot thickens. You won't be unhappy about reading this thriller- Larry Hobson- Author- "The Day Of The Rose"
Rating:
Summary: Still Better Than Most, But Not Quite Up to Par
Review: I am an avid Coben fan. I have read most of the Bolitar mysteries and all of the other stand alone books (Tell No One, Gone for Good, No Second Chance). Just One Look, while a page turner, is in my opinion not up to par with it's predecessors. That said, Coben writes a better "page turner" than most of his peers. The book revolves around a photo found by Grace Evans, a NJ housewife. In the photo are an old picture of her husband along with other people she does not know. When she asks her husband Jack about the picture, he immediately disappears. Her investigation uncovers years of a cover-up involving an incident that involved her from years past.
The plot, while enough to keep me interested, did not measure up to Coben's previous three books. How about another Bolitar, Mr. Coben?
Rating:
Summary: Far and Away Coben's Best Work to Date
Review: Harlan Coben seems to be all over the place these days. His name keeps popping up here and there. It's not really surprising, given that he has written a number of increasingly competent and popular thrillers over the past several years. But the reason for his recent notoriety may well be due to water cooler word of his latest novel JUST ONE LOOK, which is far and away his best work to date. Coben's recent novels have a unifying theme running through them: disappearance. This is not to say that all of his novels are alike; the opposite in fact is true. JUST ONE LOOK also deals with a disappearance, but in this case we know exactly what happens to the missing person. The question that keeps the pages turning and the plot chugging along is the "why" behind the event. The person asking "why" is Grace Lawson, a suburbanite who splits her time between her work as an artist and her duties as wife to Jack Lawson and mother to their two children. Grace's placid life is shattered when she picks up pictures of a recent family outing at her local photomat store and finds a picture in the group that does not belong. It seems much older than the other pictures and is not one of her family, but of five people. Grace does not recognize four of them, but the fifth person looks like a much younger version of her husband. When Grace shows the photo to Jack that evening, he denies that he's that person. Later that night, however, Jack makes a hushed phone call, drives off with the picture and does not return. Over the next several days Grace does a dangerous juggling act, attempting to shield her children from Jack's absence while trying to determine the reason for it, as well as the secret behind the photo. When Jack calls Grace shortly after his disappearance, stating that he needs some "space," she realizes that he is in terrible danger. What she does not realize, however, is that she and her children are in dire jeopardy as well. Grace acquires some likely and unlikely allies, some of who seem to know bits and pieces of the puzzle of her husband's life. But when Grace discovers that her home has been under video surveillance, she realizes that the only person who she can trust is herself. Coben throws several interesting twists into JUST ONE LOOK. For one, the reader learns almost immediately what has happened to Jack. Grace also undergoes an interesting transformation, from secure hausfrau to avenging angel, even as she is dragged kicking and screaming toward it. There is also a villain, a shadowy, terrifying character named Eric Wu who is described by one of the principals in JUST ONE LOOK as being so scary that ... well, read the book. I won't give it away, as it's but one more example of Coben's ongoing growth as a writer. But what is truly fascinating in JUST ONE LOOK is the manner in which Coben weaves the undercarriage of this tale and then slowly uncovers it. Coben's narrative pacing has never been better. This is a complex tale, and in the hands of a lesser writer the explanation would have been a hurried, wrap-it-up affair. Not so with Coben and JUST ONE LOOK; matters continue to be revealed even on the final page. Even though it's only May, JUST ONE LOOK may be the beach book of this long, hot summer. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Rating:
Summary: More of the same...
Review: Harlan Coben's new book "Just One Look", like his earlier work, is hard to put down. His style is compelling and his heroine, in this story, could be you, watching and wondering as the comfortable life you inow and love disappears in an instant. The tangle of characters in "Just One Look" starts with husband and wife, Jack and Grace Lawson. Grace is semi-famous as the survivor of a tragic stampede at a rock concert, where 18 people were killed when an out of control crowd tried to escape gunshots. The tragedy is known as "The Boston Massacre" and Grace still limps due to her injuries in the melee. The Massacre haunts the parents and loved ones of those who died and Grace knows that the disappearance of her husband one night is somehow connected with her past. She can't help but feel responsible for Jack being missing, since she showed him an old photograph of 5 people; the picture mysteriously appeared in the most recent package of photos she had processed at the local Photomat. Jack's in the photo, but Grace doesn't know the identity of the others...Coben follows her efforts to find the truth about the picture, and to find Jack. Over time, she learns that the others have been tainted by tragedy, have disappeared, or have lost their own lives. In trying to solve the mystery, Grace enlists a mob connection, Carl Vespa, whose son died in the Massacre, local police and attorneys who are all somehow connected to the photograph. Serial-killer-for-hire Eric Wu (who appeared in Coben's "Tell No One") is the key to deaths and disappearances. Grace is able to follow the thread, while trying to keep her small children safe. Although I was taken with the tension and the mystery of the plot, I was sorely disappointed at the overall quality of the book. Coben seems caught, in his last four works, with a tangle of spouses with mysterious pasts and present disappearances. Although I could not guess the outcomes of this particular thriller, (they remain vague and unsettling, then tumble out of the final chapter) neither was I very interested in the motivations of the characters or the secrets from the past. Coben needs to incorporate his tension-filled style with a new and more unique plotline in order to keep the audience he's built since he stopped writing his "humor-thriller" series about sports agent Myron Bolitar. In "Just One Look" he gives us great pacing, but then dumps the outcomes one after another in the final chapter. There's not enough new here to be wildly enthusiastic, but I'm not ready to give up on Coben just yet. Still, "Just One Look" could have been titled, "Same Old, Same Old".
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