The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
“How do you explain it when you find in someone what you’ve been waiting for your whole life? Do you call it fate? It feels lazy to call it fate. It’s more like finding your way home—where home is a place you secretly hoped for, a place you imagined, but where you’d never before been. Home. When you weren’t sure you’d ever get to have one.”
Author
Laura Dave
Publisher
Viper Books (Simon and Schuster)
Genre
Mystery/Thriller
Number of Pages
306
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Summary
“Protect her”, that’s the last thing Owen Michaels (a coder) told Hannah (his second wife) about Bailey (his teenage daughter) before he disappeared one evening without a trace.
And then the news breaks out that the company’s CEO that Owen worked for has been arrested for fraud. Hannah realizes that her husband hasn’t been entirely truthful to her and she decides to find the truth on her own, or with her step-daughter, who wants nothing to do with her.
My Review
4 reasons why I loved this thriller
The Pace
Perfect, fast-paced, short chapters and jumped right into the plot from page one.
The Plot
The suspense is palpable and the plot is twisted but believable. The writing is proof that Laura Dave is extremely observant of details.
The Characters
Hannah was simply rock-solid. First I loved her profession – a woodcarver – that’s amazing. Never heard of this in a book before. Then despite all their circumstances, her husband’s truth, the police, and her uncooperative step-daughter, she was amazingly calm, clear-headed, reasonable, and rational. That’s what I always yearn to see in a female character. I mean why not?
The Details
The story unfolded without any gory details. No blood-spilling, no knife-stabbing or bullet shots, no cursing, no scuffles, no fights. No fluff was necessary to showcase this brilliant story that had me turning pages.
Final Verdict
All the makings of a perfect thriller. Could not have been better.
Who Should Read This
Mystery fans should not miss this, especially after it has most deservedly won the Goodreads Choice award for the mystery of the year for 2021.
Laura Dave
Laura Dave is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several critically acclaimed novels including The Last Thing He Told Me, Eight Hundred Grapes and The First Husband. Her work has been published in thirty-two countries, and five of her novels, including The Last Thing he Told Me, have been optioned for film and television. She resides in Santa Monica, California.
- Top Quotes from The Last Thing He Told Me -
- “He never understood that I wasn’t scared of someone leaving me, I was scared that the wrong person would stay.”
- “This is the thing about good and evil. They aren't so far apart - and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.”
- “This is the terrible thing about a tragedy. It isn't with you every minute. You forget it, and then you remember it again.”
- “People don’t tend to work that way. We have our opinion and we filter information into a paradigm that supports it.”
- “Einstein said, So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality.”
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