Jake Sanders is a political science professor at a small undergraduate college on the East Coast. As SIX YEARS opens, he is watching the love of his life, Natalie, get married to another man, Todd Sanderson. At the end of the wedding, Natalie extracts a promise from Jake that he will never contact her - no phone calls, no visits, no emails, nothing. He makes the promise, and he manages to keep it for six long years.

In the middle of office hours six years after Natalie's wedding, Jake notices an alumni obituary posted to the college's homepage; Todd Sanderson has passed away. Jake drops everything and flies to South Carolina to attend the funeral in hopes of seeing Natalie. But when he gets there, he realizes that Natalie isn't at the funeral. He asks around and Todd's wife is actually a woman named Delia. Unfortunately, Jake must fly back home immediately, but mystery of who Todd is nags at him.

Jake systematically begins to track down Natalie. He contacts her sister, he goes to the wedding chapel, he goes to the place they met, and a few places they used to hang out when they dated. Frustratingly, Jake encounters obstacles at every turn. Natalie's sister doesn't acknowledge him, the chapel denies knowledge of the wedding ever happening, and people deny the existence of the retreat where they met. Then Jake gets an email seemingly from Natalie reminding him that he made a promise.

This convinces Jake that something he did in his search got back to Natalie, and he redoubles his efforts to find her. Unfortunately, this also puts his life in danger. Soon, dangerous men begin popping up in his life following him, threatening him, and threatening Natalie. How far is Jake willing to go to discover the truth about a woman he loved six years ago and may never have really known at all?

SIX YEARS captivated me from the very beginning and it never let go. This book is a definite page-turner, with enough intrigue to keep even an experienced thriller reader guessing. I was sure I knew what was going on, but I was proven wrong at every turn -- something I should have known when dealing with someone as adept at writing thrillers as Harlan Coben.

Book Summary

In Six Years, a masterpiece of modern suspense, Harlan Coben explores the depth and passion of lost love…and the secrets and lies at its heart.

Six years have passed since Jake Sanders watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd.

But six years haven’t come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd’s obituary, he can’t keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd’s wife he’s hoping for…but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she’s been married to Todd for almost two decades, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life—a time he has never gotten over—is turned completely inside out.

As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can’t be found, or don’t remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake’s search for the woman who broke his heart, who lied to him, soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on a carefully constructed fiction.

Harlan Coben once again delivers a shocking page-turner that deftly explores the power of past love, and the secrets and lies that such love can hide.