I'm afraid I'm reading a few of his books out of order but once again.....great story. I did read the first book in this almost series but I'm thinking that Chris is a character that I missed....in another book....to be determined....as in KEEP READING!!! ( )

No wonder I had problems understanding this book! I have just discovered that this is the second book in a series. I kept thinking that I had missed something. There were so many times where I went back and read a passage again and was forced into making guesses.

The book raised a number of interesting issues: reality TV programs that "play" with the emotions of participants/contestants; the use of DNA to trace relatives etc. That bit I appreciated. But there were really too many holes in my understanding for me to really enjoy reading the book. ( )

The author has a way of writing that keeps your interest from chapter to chapter. This story is about Wilde, a man who was found living in the forests of New Jersey around 6 yrs old. He has finally decided to try to find his parents. His search brings up a match to someone called PB. And the ?fun? begins. We have a reality star being defamed, adoptions that turn out not to be adoptions, a group of vigilantes who decide the person who needs to be ?dealt? with and Wilde caught in the middle. Quite an adventure. Goodreads: Wilde has grown up knowing nothing of his family, and even less about his own identity . All he knows is that, as a young child, he was found living a feral existence in the Ramapo mountains of New Jersey.He became known simply as Wilde, the boy from the woods.Now Wilde has had a hit on the DNA website he has been researching. A 100% match. His father. They meet up, and Wilde soon realises that his father doesn't even know he had a son and is as mystified as Wilde is by his existence.Undaunted, Wilde continues his research for his family on DNA websites where he becomes caught up in a community of online doxxers, a secret group committed to exposing anonymous trolls.Then one by one these doxxers start to die, and it soon becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting this secret community - and that his next victim might be Wilde himself ...

(2022)Very good. Genealogy DNA and reality TV make a good combination as Wilde tries to find out who his parents were and why he was abandoned as young boy in the woods. PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY: Could Wilde, a 40-something man who was discovered living on his own three decades earlier in the New Jersey woods, finally learn how he came to grow up feral? Bestseller Coben provides some answers in this uneven sequel to 2020's The Boy from the Woods. After years of uncertainty, Wilde submits a DNA sample to a genealogy website, but after he receives a message about a possible second cousin, identified only as PB, Wilde gets distracted and never responds to PB's message. Sometime later, just as Wilde is preparing to return to the U.S. from Costa Rica, a new alert identifies his biological father as Nevada's Daniel Carter. But when Wilde tracks him down, Carter's unsure about more than a one-time meeting. Wilde reaches out to PB hoping to learn more, only to find this potential second blood relative unreachable. His search for PB enmeshes him in the messy world of internet trolls, vigilantes, and reality TV, and lands him as the prime suspect in a murder. Plenty of exciting action makes up only in part for a lack of character depth. Coben has done better. Agent: Lisa Vance, Aaron M. Priest Literary. (Mar.)

2.5 stars. Sadly my least favourite Coben novel to-date. ( )