While the premise is relatively common, "The Last Thing He Told Me" excels on the execution. Laura Dave's work is a thrilling read which keeps just the right number of secrets for just the right amount of time. As such, it does not fall into a trap that many novels in the genre do.
That trap is predictability. I did not see where the novel was going for much of the time. It was only when I got to the final few chapters did the ending take shape. And many reveals in the middle were very unexpected. Dave leaves out the boring parts and makes sure the reader is always involved in the story. She did not lose me one bit at any point while I was reading. Even so, that's not saying much. Any good writer would do such a thing. Have you ever read a thriller?
Luckily, there were many other things that stood out. One of the things that really drew me in was the gradual expansion of the story's scope. Things that at first appear simple turn out not to be, but more than that, a story that at first appears to be simple turns out not to be.
By the tenth chapter, the disappearance of a husband and father hints at something much more sinister. The story continues to balloon from there (while keeping its intimate feel), before becoming something else entirely, yet still part of the same narrative.
"The Last Thing He Told Me" is full of relatable episodes and really makes the reader feel for the characters. Well, it's not exactly that the episodes are relatable, but the way the characters feel about them and about each other; about how the others are connected to the main story.
One important lesson from the story is that there are many other people in the world who are outside your situation. They have no idea what you are dealing with. Dave returns to this idea again and again; her narrator mentions the people outside her life. Furthermore, these people outside your situation tend to be helpful when you ask them. I can think of two characters in specific who went above and beyond for the narrator and her stepdaughter, and I have had similar (though less dramatic) experiences in my own life.
An aside: the story opens in Sausalito, California. Sausalito is in the San Francisco Bay Area, from where I hail. I heard places I recognize in San Francisco or elsewhere discussed. This made the book more compelling to me, but I understand this to be a coincidence.
One of the ways the story was made interesting was through its use of flashbacks. Dave made sure to use the minimum amount of backstory in her narrative (a method of storytelling with which I agree). But when she did use backstory, she always revealed something. One thing in specific, that often did not make sense until much later in the story.
These flashbacks were deliberately structured to regress in time: one day before, then six weeks, all the way until over two years until the main story began. It almost made me annoyed, like I wanted to know the meaning of what was going on as to what was happening.
Dave writes the story with a first-person narrator; I liked the more limited perspective in this case as it did not reveal too much. I also liked Dave's use of the present tense, it made the story feel more urgent.
A few criticisms: "The Last Thing He Told Me" requires some big-time suspension of disbelief. To be fair, most thrillers do. However, I think some things should have been more worked out, such as how a career woodworker (the narrator's profession) who had little reason to doubt the constants in her life could find things out at nearly the efficiency of James Bond.
One development, although I did not see it coming, adheres to such a well-worn trope in the mystery/thriller world that I initially thought I could state outright what happens. However, I do not want to spoil anything for anyone who might read it. It suffices to say that Dave does not, in my opinion, do enough to avoid certain genre cliches.
I know I said earlier that the author "leaves out the boring parts." However, some things happen a little too fast. At the part near the end of the novel when most (but not all) of the truth is revealed, the story was told at a faster pace than that with which I could keep up (and that is saying something).
However, one more thing the novel excels at is character development. The main subject of the novel, his wife (the narrator), and his daughter all have their own unique character arcs. As a writer myself, it is a balancing act to tie all these stories together, even when the characters are in the same family.
I really enjoyed the development of the relationship between the narrator and her stepdaughter. While the need to overcome tensions in a blended family breaks no ground for a writer, the way they interacted was what I liked. Like I said, it is about execution.
A journal called "The Last Thing He Told Me" the beach read of the year. I like to think it was more than that, because of its scope and themes. It was not simply a thriller with notes of family drama, it was both a thriller and a family drama, with a surprising amount of depth. It was enjoyable to read a book like that with depth, and that is what elevated it above a "beach read."
4 stars.
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