Review: The Last Thing He Told Me

Title: The Last Thing He Told Me
Author: Laura Dave
Genre: General Thriller/Suspense
Page Count: 320
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Date Published: May 4, 2021
You can find it here: Bookshop.org

Goodreads Synopsis:

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her.

Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.

Thoughts:

(3.5 rounding up) While I definitely wouldn’t classify this as an intensely suspenseful thriller, I liked it all the more for it? Sometimes it’s just nice to just have a more low-stakes page turner than a nail-biter centring around themes of sexual assault, violence, and murder. What I’m saying: if you like your thrillers intense and scary, you won’t find that here.

The Last Thing He Told Me was a really enjoyable, undemanding family drama that threw plausibility completely out the window for a plot that canters along at a nice steady pace. I loved watching the relationship between Bailey and Hannah grow and the whole of this story really centres upon that for me. While the last stretch of this story got a little too far fetched and slightly ridiculous, the whole of the adventure was enjoyable. I never really knew where Laura Dave was taking this. 

Am I happy with the ending? Nah, not so much. It felt a little off and mostly set up for sentimental emotional manipulation, a major literary pet peeve of mine. But overall The Last Thing He Told Me was fun with enough twists & turns to keep the reader interested and well worth the read. The honest and touching mother step-daughter relationship taking top marks. 

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