Book Review: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

 

Book: The Last Thing He Told Me 

Author: Laura Dave 

Pages: 320 

Read on: Kindle 

Read in: 3-4 hours 

Plot Summary: 

We all have stories we never tell.

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.

Things I Liked:

1. I really enjoy books about secret pasts and new identities and the threat of exposure of sand new identities! That's what the premise of this book promised and I was so excited to get into this book! There is a nice thread of suspense that runs through most of the book. We wonder who Owen Michaels really is, what had he done to assume a new identity and why did he want his daughter protected more than anything else? The book does a great job of unravelling these mysteries one by one. 

2. I really liked Hannah. She is calm, collected, smart and very good at following the barely-there breadcrumbs her husband had left her. She follows her gut and does everything she can to keep Bailey safe. I read that Julia Roberts is playing her in the TV adaptation of this book and I am so ready to watch that! I loved how Hannah took seemingly small and casual mentions that her husband had dropped and used it as a starting point for her quest to find his true identity in order to assess what kind of danger Bailey was in. 

3. The actual "mystery" of the book is also nicely done. It was not too dramatic and entirely plausible. I like when that happens in books of this genre! 

4. I also liked the "solution" that Hannah comes up with in order to protect Bailey and Owen (as much as it was possible to do so) in the end. I think you'll like Hannah even more for doing that. 

5. This is a great book. There is a nice mystery, a nice mystery solving process and some nice characters. 

Rating: 4/5