Harlan Coben's Shelter

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.

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.

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.

Not sure why people are saying there's so much profanity in this series. It's honestly not that much, the first f word wasn't until 19:50 minutes and the first s word was at 17:23 minutes (not like another review said there was so many within the first 15 mins - no clue what show that reviewer was watching...as reading that review I thought it was going to be very liberal with the profanity), as it honestly wasn't that much profanity, only 9-10 instances in the whole first episode, and they were very spread out within the episode and then had 2-3 within two or three sentences of dialogue. Also they're teenagers - maybe spend some time with them, as they curse a lot when not in the company of adults, so yeah...I found that it was actually pretty realistic. The background music has a bit of profanity, but the character's dialogue isn't bad...at least in the first episode.

Also if you've read the novel, yes some characters have been changed a bit, but Harlan Coben was HEAVILY involved in the production. I've only watched one episode so far but this seems to be ramping up to definitive Coben's twists and turns. Can't wait to see what else is in store.

Really enjoying this show. Usually I get lost with Harlen Coben's series but this one I can follow. Maybe because I'm actually watching it and not on my phone. Trust me you DO NOT want to be distracted during this show. Something big happens in every scene, and the series moves very fast. The acting is great, with lots of fun characters. (The nerdy kid with glasses is really funny, and all the main actors are very good.) Can't wait to see what future episodes bring! If you want more, hey, hit pause and Amazon will even sell you the book! I have to write 600 characters so here you go Internet Movie Database.