Harlan Coben's Shelter

The series on whole for story telling is average and surprisingly enough for Harlan Coban very predictable.

That said though I think the hype around the writer is why other reviews are negative as people expect brilliance from this type of show.

It's a good show and with obvious flaws, it has two fantastic positives in Adrian Greensmith (Spoon) and Abi Corrigan (Ema). I found the pair of them so interesting, funny and lovable. They carried the show from start to finish by pulling on your every emotion during the journey.

Don't be put off by the negativity but instead go into without expectation and just enjoy the show.

I'm trying to write this without spoilers.

The first two episodes are great, a captivating fast moving thriller with plenty of action and appealing characters.

Then episode three gives us a warning of what is to come as it starts to go off on a couple of weird tangents.

By episode 4 the writers had evidently lost inspiration and started writing random we have a load of boring filler.

It is hard to work out what went wrong. Were the writers left unsupervised? Were the first two episodes just to trick viewers into watching what they actually wanted to write?

Whatever happened, end result had us reaching for our phones.

As some others have said, there were drastic changes from the book adaption and they weren't good changes! The book doesn't even have an Aunt Shira so that threw me off immediately. Then there's a whole separate storyline of her becoming a lesbian? I guess they felt they needed to diversify the characters, but it felt really unnecessary to me and didn't add anything of value to the story. On a positive note some of the episodes were very suspenseful and there were some good twists. Another thing mentioned by other reviewers was the foul language. The cursing was really excessive which surprises me because it was supposed to be targeting young teens so I thought it would be a bit more family friendly. I have enjoyed the adaptation of other Coben books, but this one was overall a big disappointment. Read or listen to the book instead! Not sure if there's going to be a season two, but if there is, I hope they clean it up! So much potential from the book for the screen adaptation to be good. Such a waste.

Harlan Coben is a fabulous writer with really interesting characters and great stories. I've read all his books about Myron Bolitor and his nephew Micky Bolitor, including the books upon which this series is based but I don't recall any ascerbic aunt! Where's Myron?? What the hell? I am Halfway through episode 1 and I just can't do it. Sigh. I have such high hopes when my favourite authors get their books made into movies or television series and, inevitably, such disappointment when I watch. I'll stick to the books. (I cannot watch Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher either.). It's probably a good show, based on other reviews, but it's not for me.

Interesting plot and characters. I always enjoy the mysteries that have a historical element to them. Cold cases, unsolved disappearances, wrongful convictions. I have to say though - the language in the thing is exaggeratedly foul. Gratuitous use of the f-bomb. Coben didn't write that way. He didn't need to throw in excess bad language in order to make his point or create the mood of the scene. To me - not an informed critic - just an avid reader and viewer - it takes a LOT away from the show. The screenwriters make it sound like they can't write a sentence without using the word f--. Pretty disappointing.