The Boy from the Woods

Book Reviews

Oct 7

The Boy from the Woods (Wilde #1)
By: Harlan Coben

So I actually read book two (The Match) first on accident, so it was a little bit different experience/perspective reading this one AFTER that one.

I’ve always enjoyed Harlan Coben’s books. He writes a good thriller and they’re usually pretty clean. (I think this one only had 1 f-word in it)

The Characters

I think what makes this series unique are the characters.

Wilde was found as a boy, surviving on his own in the woods. No parents were ever found (Cue book 2 when he pursues a DNA match on an ancestry site). He makes friends with a boy he meets named David until they are discovered. He grows up with a foster family and is now an adult with some military experience living off the grid with attachment issues. But he’s super smart because he would break into people’s houses and watch their VHS tapes. (Okay so it’s not a flawless backstory…)

I picture him like Jim Caviezel’s character on the show Person of Interest except Wilde is a worse shot and a worse driver. Somewhat flat personality— I read all of his dialogue in my head with zero inflection. He’s mysterious and loyal and has a strong sense of justice. He’s a protector and a finder of the bad guys.

David’s mom, Hester Crimstein, is our other main character. Her and Wilde have a special bond and share the grief of David dying in a car accident. Hester is a feisty well-known criminal defense lawyer over 70 with a non-nonsense demeanor. She’s like a mixture between Judge Judy and Betty White. She says it how it is.

She brings a lot of entertainment to the book.

A couple other minor characters are Laila and Matthew. Laila was married to David and Matthew is their son. Laila and Wilde have a complicated relationship. They’re both in love with each other now but don’t think they could ever make it work. Wilde has to live in the wild and commit to anything. We watch that relationship unfold in this and the next book.

Wilde is like a father-figure to Matthew. Matthew is mostly in the story to create a way for Wilde to interact with someone and to show his fatherly side, trying to make up for the years Matthew lost with David.

The Plot

A girl at Matthew’s school— Naomi Pine— has lived a tormented life at school with severe bullying. One day she goes missing. She is expected to be a runaway. Eventually we discover it was a ruse, a game called The Challenge— in efforts to climb the social ladder. So when she disappears AGAIN, no one takes it seriously.

But then the rich family’s son— her bully (His name is Crash; I think Cash was already taken)— also goes missing, Wilde can’t help but think there’s a connection.

Wilde and Hester are hired by the rich family to help them get their son back. They do double duty trying to also track down Naomi.

A ransom note gives them a task and a deadline. Can they get the teens back before someone gets hurt?

Comments

I thought it was suspenseful. It may not have had a shock factor, but it was still a good story and I read it pretty fast.

The plot of the next book revolves around the DNA match Wilde gets and I didn’t realize that would come up that much in this book, but it’s setting the scene for the next one. I wish I could remember better how that one ended!

One thing that bothered me in the second book was how much they talked about David’s accident and how Hester wanted to know what happened and Wilde was avoiding the subject.

We never got any answers in that book. So I was curious to know if this book had any, because if it didn’t I was going to be very annoyed.

I think we did? The second book made it seem like a really big deal so what they explain in this book seemed a bit anticlimactic to what I was expecting, so I think part of me feels like I missed something. But maybe if I had read them in order it would have made more sense.