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Oct 21, 2020gloryb rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
The title of this novel is misleading as the novel is not about a child lost in the woods; that child is now a grown man, the sleuth in this story. There were other things that bothered me about the story's construction. Coben gives too much space to the relationships among the characters and their backgrounds. Half way into the book, the plot for the novel finally begins to take shape with a teen boy's disappearance, his worried wealthy parents, the appearance of a ransom note, and the attempts at finding the boy. The first half of the book, about the missing bullied female teen, seems to be a subplot with only minable connection to the main plot of the novel, the second half of the book. For me, all characters were unsympathetic. The dialogue in the novel was phony, especially for Hester, an older New York female lawyer. There was little tension. Coben uses this novel as a soap box for the inclusion of current social issues such as fake news, teen bullying, and inequity between rich white and poor black folks.