When Bailey gets in the car and dumps a duffle bag stuffed with cash and a note from Owen in her lap, Hannah knows for sure Owen is gone. When she picks up her stepdaughter, Bailey, she hears a report on the car radio that the high-tech company where Owen is the chief coder has been raided by federal authorities. Hannah and Owen have been married just over a year when Hannah receives a note, delivered by a 12-year-old girl, which says, “Protect her.” Thinking Owen is playing a prank, Hannah tries to reach him to no avail. Hannah, Owen, and Bailey, 16, live on a houseboat in the San Francisco Bay. Sausalito, California, is a sleepy, waterfront town where everyone knows everyone else. The chapters toggle between the present and the past, allowing the reader to develop an understanding of both the relationship between Hannah and her husband, Owen, but also of Owen himself, despite the fact that he is physically absent throughout the novel. The events take place over four days and in two locations: Sausalito, California and Austin, Texas.

The reader is privy to Hannah’s interior life: her emotions, her memories, and her interpretations of events and estimations of other people. Hannah Hill, a 40-year-old woodturner who makes furniture for upscale clients, narrates this novel. Dave also employs several literary devices-such as a foil, cliffhangers, and a crucible-all of which heighten the novel’s tension and keep the reader engaged with the text.Īll page references are to the Kindle version of The Last Thing He Told Me. The Last Thing He Told Me adheres to the traditional elements of a mystery novel: The stakes are high for Hannah and her stepdaughter Bailey, and continue to grow as the novel progresses, several hints and instances of foreshadowing are sprinkled throughout the text, and the pace of the novel is rapid from the first page to the last, with only brief moments of slowing in the flashback segments. While the date of the novel’s story is not directly stated, it takes place in the technology-laden contemporary world and features a story about securities fraud perpetrated by a high-tech company, which echoes real-life events of the past decade. There are regularly interspersed flashback scenes, which help establish the backstory of Hannah Hill and allow the reader to feel she is a trustworthy guide through the knotty puzzle of the novel. Unlike those books, the narrator of The Last Thing He Told Me is reliable and the story is told from a close first-person point of view, allowing the reader to access the events, characters, and memories in the novel only through the lens of the protagonist, Hannah Hill. Like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train, The Last Thing investigates the impact of secrets and lies on intimate relationships.

The last thing he told me a novel