Sharon is excited but wary when the bank calls to say all her debts have been paid:
When Sharon stops to take a breath, Maggie explains. “I was just hired for a job.”The authors use technology as an ongoing theme in the book. Maggie, her husband, and their best friend Trace had started a foundation using cutting-edge surgical treatments for refugees in third world countries. Together, they developed new techniques that attracted wealthy donors. Another piece of technology was created by Sharon (conveniently, an AI genius) for Maggie: a “griefbot,” an artificial version of someone she lost—that has been loaded with the person’s emails, photos, and written work, and can communicate in real time, to a certain point. Other innovative technology is used by Maggie when she performs cosmetic surgery for a wealthy Russian oligarch.
That silences Sharon for a moment. Then: “And this job paid off my debts?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of job?”
“A high paying one.”
“Well, I knew that already.”
“I’ll be gone a week, maybe two.”
“Doing what, Mags?”
“Don’t worry, okay?”
“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’ because no one ever worries after someone says that.”
After Maggie performs the surgery on two unusual patients, she realizes her life may be in danger from those who want to keep it secret and don’t trust her. Although the suspense continues and the action is dramatic, the plot begins to suspend believability as Maggie manages to escape (without a coat, in freezing temperatures) from a Russian dacha to Dubai where her patients bounce back from surgery in about 48 hours, also having traveled with impressive speed to Dubai.
The fast pace and drama continue as Maggie tries to figure out why she was chosen for the surgery and how she can stay alive. Back home, her sister and her father-in-law, Porkchop, an aging biker, have learned her phone was destroyed and are trying to find and rescue her. They were unusual but appealing characters. I found this very entertaining, with emotional highs as Maggie copes with loss of family and loss of her profession. The story is mostly told from Maggie’s point of view but Coben does have a slightly irritating style of having his third person narrator provide ironic commentary, such as when Maggie visits a private club in Dubai and notices all the women are young and glamorous:
They are, no question, hot but extremes – their hair is either jet-black or white blonde, their skin is either darkly tanned or completely pale, and – no judgment here – they’ve all been surgically enhanced or rejuvenated, which, come to think of it, are two more euphemisms.I find this jarring because even when the reader agrees (I seem to recall something in the last book of his I read about the junk drawer we all have in our kitchens) or finds it amusing, it distracts from the absorption in the story. The writing is definitely Coben’s voice, and this makes sense because in an NPR interview they describe how they “would meet in person probably every other week for a few hours at his apartment and just talk about teasing it all out. And then Harlan would write, and he would send [Reese] chapters. And [she] would go back in and say, well, I don't think she'd say it like this. I think she'd say it like that. Or, this is amazing. Keep going.”
Reese is known to be an avid reader and has her own book club, with a wide variety of choices, quite a few of which I have read and reviewed, now that I look at the entire list: The Alice Network, Such a Fun Age, The Last Thing He Told Me, Something in the Water, Northern Spy, The Marriage Portrait, Tom Lake, and First Lie Wins. She has also chosen a few I thought were lame but, overall, her taste must be not that different from mine. While I would consider Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton’s collaboration more seamless, I enjoyed this book.
This is my thirty-first book for the 2025 Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge.
Author: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben
Publication: Grand Central Publishing, hardcover, 2025
Genre: Suspense
Source: Library
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