The Last Thing He Told Me

I read this book in one day and I chose it because of the wonderful reviews it received and the fact that it was voted GR best choice mystery & suspense winner of 2021 (do you feel a but coming?). The book was a gripper, for sure, or I would not have dropped everything for 24 hours to finish, especially considering my serious lack of free time these days. (here it comes) But when I sat down to review, I drew a complete blank. I mean, for a few minutes I could not even remember the plot. Now this could be because of my advancing years OR it could be that the book just wasn’t as great for me as I thought it was while I was racing furiously to the finish line.

The story is well crafted, but the bottom line is I found it far-fetched. At show more this point I have to defer to a quote from the e.e. cummings poem chosen by the author as an epigraph to her novel:

let’s go said he
not too far said she
what’s too far said he
where you are said she

I always have reservations when I read a book where the heroine (or hero) is better equipped to follow up leads than the detectives – or in this case, the FBI or a U.S. Marshal.

Hannah is a woodturner. For those of you, like me, who do not know what that is exactly, or who assume it to be a wood carver or whittler, woodturning is a wood craft which employs a spinning lathe and carving tools (thank you Google). Hannah is not merely a woodturner, but rather a maestro in her field, her clients numbering among the rich and famous. Her works feature on the covers of the most popular trade magazines in her field. She is married to Owen who is also a genius in his field (mathematician/CTO?). BTW, this plot would have worked just as well if both Hannah and Owen were average middle-class Joes. For me, the glitz detracts and makes the story less believable.

The plot: rich and famous High-Tech magnate, Avett Thompson, owner of The Shop, his latest Start-Up, is about to make a killing with his newest app. He shows up at Hannah’s workshop to have a look at the latest piece of furniture his wife has ordered for their home. His wonderboy employee, Owen, is tagging along. Owen chats up Hannah and before you know it, they are happily married and living on a houseboat in Sausalito with his sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Saint Hannah shows remarkable restraint and love (worthy of several eyerolls) for this difficult teen who basically wants no part of her. Several pages later, Owen is gone! He appears to have flown the coop leaving Hannah with only the cryptic message, “protect her”, and Bailey with $650,000 in cash, stuffed into a black duffle bag. Once she learns that Avett and his company are under SEC investigation for defrauding his shareholders to the tune of several billion dollars, Hannah is even more worried when a U.S. Marshal shows up on her porch and later the FBI, each seemingly with a different agenda. Who can she trust? Trust no one, the Marshal warns her, and thus begins her journey into wide blue yonder – a trip that brings Hannah and Bailey closer as they search for the missing Owen. As the two attempt to unravel the mystery of Owen, they work together as a team and learn to trust each other (does this sound like I’m reviewing a Nicholas Oldland picture book for kids?).

There are lots of surprises, including the ending. My eyes did roll a few times during Hannah’s meeting with a family patriarch, legal counsel for “the Mob”. But altogether this was a fun, page-flipping read. After glancing at the thrillers I read that were published last year, I would have to agree that this was one of the better ones.

I both listened to the audio and read the ebook - depending on what I was doing while reading/listening. If you plan to listen I suggest speeding up to 1.2. Slower than that was plodding. show less

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave is an outstanding missing person story that has an ending I did not expect but which I love. Because the suspense element is not enough, it is a bittersweet story about family, love, and sacrifice. Hannah’s attempts to befriend Bailey are perfect, as are Bailey’s snubs. Ms. Dave must have a sixteen-year-old at home because I found Bailey way too similar to my own daughter at times. Their tentative bond is poignant, as is Hannah’s protection of Bailey at all costs. I was already a huge fan of Ms. Dave, but The Last Thing He Told Me convinced me I need to go back and read everything of hers I missed.

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave is a 2021 Simon & Schuster publication.

This book got lots of ‘buzz’ last year, was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, and an instant NYT bestseller. Naturally, I added it to my TBR list… but it took me over a year to finally get around to reading it, but boy was it worth the wait!!

The story grabbed my attention immediately, but I couldn’t have guessed how engrossing, smart and ell-plotted the book would be, or how emotional it would become…

Hannah and her teenage stepdaughter, Bailey, are having trouble adjusting to one another, though Bailey’s father, Owen, insists his daughter will eventually come around. So far, though, Hannah's hasn't been able to win her over...

But then Owen, show more only barely manages to get a brief, simple message to Hannah, sending her a note which read ‘protect her’- obviously referring to Bailey. With that, he proceeds to vanish- seemingly because his employer runs afoul of the law.

But his possible culpability is the least of their worries, and suddenly Hannah and Bailey must work together, whether Bailey likes it or not, if they hope to find Owen, battling unknown forces in their quest to uncover the truth…

The suspense is palpable, the mystery deep and compelling. The plotting is tight, the pacing so pitch perfect it was impossible to put this book down.

But the story reaches out further than the mystery/thriller elements to create a mother/daughter bond that beyond all else is the cornerstone of the story-

And is ultimately the most rewarding pay- off.

Overall, this book did indeed live up to the hype. As 2022, with one or two notable exceptions, has mainly served up stale, lukewarm offerings in the thriller category, thus far, I was relieved to discover I had an ace in the hole with this one. Highly recommend!!

5 stars show less

High key annoyed. This book made no sense and it was repetitive as anything. The plot made me lose several dozen brain cells. I can't even call this a thriller since as many pointed out this was more of a domestic drama. I could see this book getting some play via Lifetime or Netflix and we all would be screaming at the character of Hannah for not making any sense.

"The Last Thing He Told Me" follows 40 year old Hannah Hall. Hannah we find is married to Owen. Owen has a daughter named Bailey from his first marriage. Hannah gets a note from her husband saying "Protect her." and Hannah realizes that she needs to protect Bailey. From there the book follows the mysteries of Owen and what exactly Hannah needs to protect Bailey from.

Hannah show more drove me up the wall. She keeps doing really dumb things and keeps excusing every thing that Owen does and nope, just nope. I also never got a sense of them as a couple. Dave decides to showcase Hannah and Owen's relationship in little vignettes that don't help anything. It doesn't help that we keep hearing how Hannah's mother abandoned her (it's weird the father was just excused) so that means she has to stick with Bailey. Lord. I was tired of it. Hannah needed therapy.

The secondary characters except for Bailey don't really work IMHO. Bailey felt real and her reactions were realistic. Maybe if the story had been told from her point of view the book would have worked better.

The writing was not great in a lot of places. Others mentioned grammatical mistakes that I found too. Also the book see-saws between the present and whatever past thing/action she had with her and Owen. So you would get a chapter in present day with Hannah "investigating" and then it would jump back and have her remembering her and Owen drinking on their little porch or whatever. Those chapters did not help anything.

I think what gets me is how terrible the plot got. We start off with a missing father and it looks like it's tied to a financial scandal and then Dave throws something else out and it didn't need it. As some readers said, the first part of the book was interesting with Owen missing. But once we had Hannah turn into super detective the whole book got old quick.

The flow was awful. I think everything happened in like a week time period.

The setting of California and Texas didn't feel real to me at all. I think Dave was too focused on what people looked like and didn't really think of how both states/cities sounded and felt the same. At least they did to me while reading.

The epilogue made me shake my head. I called BS on that whole ending since it didn't even sound realistic even a little bit. show less

Yet another book that was popular that I thought would be overrated. It's not. I was immediately hooked and then pleasantly surprised when it wasn't this perfect wrapped up bundle at the end. It left me feeling sad but also happy (?) and then confused that both of those feelings are living in the same bubble.

I really enjoyed the style of writing - like storytelling but not so much background information that it became disjointed from the present moment. It was skillfully looped in and intriguing. There were obviously some things in here that were not believable or good, but for me personally, it didn't take away from the story. It gave me Jason Bourne vibes and I'm down for it.

I don't normally write down quotes from fiction books, but show more these stood out to me:

"This is the terrible thing about a tragedy. It isn't with you every minute. You forget it, and then you remember it again. And you see it with a stark quality: This is what is required of you now, just to get along."

"In one way or another, this is the deal we all sign when we love someone. For better or worse. It's the deal we have to sign again and again to keep that love. We don't turn away from the parts of someone we don't want to see. However quickly or long it takes to see them. We accept them if we are strong enough. Or we accept them enough to not let the bad parts become the entire story" show less

As Laura Dave’s taut thriller, The Last Thing He Told Me, begins, Hannah Hall is unable to contact Owen Michaels, her husband of one year. Owen has managed though to smuggle a note to Hannah that says only, “Protect Her.” The message, Hannah realizes, refers to Bailey, Owen's 16-year-old daughter from his first marriage, who has resisted accepting Hannah into her life and resents having to share her father with his new wife. But “protect her”? From what? As the story proceeds, Hannah’s initial confusion and distress are magnified when news reports suggest that there is some nefarious motivation behind Owen’s disappearance. Owen is a software developer for a successful tech firm called The Shop, and his boss has been show more arrested on suspicion of running a financial scam and cheating investors. Hannah trusts Owen with her life and is convinced he is innocent of any financial fraud. But if he is not complicit in whatever is going on at The Shop, why has he gone into hiding? And why did he conceal a duffel bag full of cash in Bailey’s school locker? Then Hannah learns that The Shop has been under investigation for months, and a U.S. marshal who accosts Hannah causes her further anxiety with hints that Owen has been lying to her all along and is not the man she thought he was. From this point, Dave’s cleverly constructed novel ramps up the tension when Hannah and Bailey head out to find Owen and look into his mysterious past. Laura Dave’s heroine, Hannah Hall, is a supremely attractive protagonist: resourceful, thoughtful, caring, independent. The layered mystery of Owen’s disappearance is only one thread of the story: the reader also becomes invested in the evolving relationship between Hannah and Bailey, thrust together under fraught circumstances and forced to work together toward a common goal. The narrative moves at breakneck speed, is filled with twists and turns that keep the reader guessing, and along the way introduces peripheral characters who serve a variety of plot functions but also generate interest as individuals. The bittersweet resolution is satisfying and resists the sentimentality to which it could easily have fallen prey. Laura Dave’s sixth novel is a solid entertainment, suspenseful and engaging from start to finish. Her writing is tight and polished. It may be obvious that The Last Thing He Told Me is a novel written with the big screen in mind, but fans of suspense fiction won’t be disappointed. show less

This was a hard-to-put-down suspense novel built on a foundation of family drama. Owen marries Hannah, and she moves in with him and his teenage daughter Bailey. They live in a floating home in Sausalito, just outside of San Francisco (about 10 minutes from where I actually live, so that was fun). They’ve been together happily for a year when Owen suddenly disappears without a trace. He leaves both Hannah and Bailey cryptic notes and a bagful of thousands of dollars. He doesn’t come home or answer his phone, and no one can locate him. The tech company Owen works for is accused of fraud and the FBI and a US marshal are both looking for him. Suddenly all Hannah and Bailey have are each other, and a painful sense of loss as they show more realize they have a lot of questions about Owen – not only where he is, but who he is.

This is a well-written, tensely plotted mystery that explores love, trust, and family. It’s the type of novel that will have you asking what you would do in a similar situation. I liked the way the plot began almost immediately and pulled me right into the story. Each character was believable, especially 16-year-old Bailey. Even with only small tidbits of clues, Hannah is smart enough to make connections. I appreciated the very real observations about grief and loss, good and evil, secrets and truth. I highly recommend this novel. show less