#BlogTour ‘The Last Thing he Told Me’ by Laura Dave

About the book…

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.

Many thanks to Sahina and the team at Viper for my blogtour invite, and gifted review copy of ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ by Laura Dave, which is out now in ebook and hardcover.

Ostensibly appearing like a mystery novel, a missing person hunt, this is a deeply personal novel about the power of maternal love, hope and expectation for the life of your child.

Hannah, a woman whose mother had left her as a child, and Bailey, her step-daughter, are thrust into a personal and very public sphere by their husband, and father, Owen’s, suspected actions. Implicated in major fraud, he leaves two notes, one for Hannah and one for Bailey, and disappears.

Between juggling her emotions on what to do, where to look for Owen-even, whether to look-she centres Bailey in her thoughts and actions, keeping the last thing Owen told her ‘ Protect Her‘ as her primary motivation to keep going.

Facing social pariah-dom from their circle of friends, insinuations of involvement in the disappearance of investors billions, the fears and worry over their future, Hannah and Bailey, reluctant protagonists in their own story, embark on a voyage of trying to uncover what Owen did, and, who he actually is.

When your entire life,and marriage, is completely upended, do you hold on to memories of love and companionship or discard them as absolute lies?

When your step daughter, who hasn’t had enough time to move past the ‘I hate you‘ stage, suddenly depends on you for everything, where do you turn for support?

There are so many threads running through this story, from Hannah’s profession of wood turning (she finds the beauty and the object in raw materials and brings out the shape she envisages)to the family’s house (a houseboat, technically a large foreshadowing of a marriage, and a life, with no solid foundation). They combine to create a family portrait of love, one pf loyalty and a strong moral code which has to exist to survive the claims being thrown at Bailey and Hannah.

Their relationship, or rather, the creation of a relationship rather than Hannah’s try too hard attempts versus Bailey’s teen strops, is so natural, so well constructed that this becomes the heart of a very human story. Hannah is a character with layers that she doesn’t even realise herself, she spends the book trying to decipher clues left by Owen, to reveal the truth of what she had, and what she now aims for.

A gripping mystery, a personal journey of reflection and an intense examination of what it means to be a parent, this will be wonderful to see adapted and I am not surprised to see that there is a massive buzz building around this novel. As an aside, I don’t know who decide to insert the actual notes that Owen left Hannah and Bailey into the book, but it was a stroke of genius which really pulled me into the story, and actually made me gasp out loud (you couldn’t see them from the outside of the book, you turned the page and there it was!)

I definitely want to read more by Laura Dave, the way she constructs her characters is extremely engaging and you feel as if you are on the journey with them. Highly recommended!

About the author…

Laura Dave is the bestselling author of several critically acclaimed novels including ‘Eight Hundred Grapes’ and ‘The First Husband’.

Her work has been published in eighteen 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.

Links-http://www.lauradave.com/