The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel

Waited to read this after all of the hoopla died down because sometimes the hype is overrated. Also,this is my first time rrading this author. Defintely going to check out her other books. Surprisingly I really enjoyed this book. I did not know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got into it and stayed the course. Didn't skip over anything. Nice pace of a story. Surprised by the turn of events. Surprised by the ending. I have been to Sausalito numerous times. It's definitely a "have" place. Nice homes. I used to joke that I couldn't afford the front door at most of the homes! Nice walking town. Great restaurants. Shopping is high end. The views are stunning. Typical northern California weather. Hannah played it cool when her prized table was in a house. Hannah played it cool throughout the whole book. Curious now to see how Jennifer Garner portrayed Hannah in the series. Enjoy!

I bought this book after watching the limited series of it on Apple TV+, for two reasons: the series received surprisingly mixed reviews for a novel hot enough to incite a bidding war over it – and I wanted to see if I could diagnose, if possible, how it ended up partially derailed – and, in an admittedly odd coincidence, I'm from Austin and have lived in NYC and the Bay Area, the three main settings in each iteration. I'll focus on that since plenty of others have covered its other elements.

Given Dave's superlative plotting and prose, and the emphasis throughout the novel placed on divining the meaning of exceptionally specific details, I was frankly taken aback by the lack of detail specific to Austin – or, rather, the lack of accurate detail. Her description of the University of Texas campus is accurate, as is one for an renowned 24-hour cafe. (Well, formerly 24 hours: they started closed at 10pm after their post-Covid reopening due to a lack of staff, but I assume Dave finished the novel before the pandemic.) The rest is surprisingly sloppy, and almost made me think I'd somehow purchased an early, unfinished draft. (I was startled to see a mistaken reference to Ethan in the first part of the book, set in Sausalito, for starters.)

After arriving in Austin, Hannah & Bailey check into a hotel near Lady Bird Lake, one which Dave places on the south side of the Congress Avenue Bridge (its correct name) – except she subsequently refers to it as the South Congress Bridge AND the Congress Street Bridge. (This for the same bridge, keep in mind.) She correctly cites its bats – it houses the largest urban bat colony on Earth – but mentions seeing "hundreds and hundreds" of them.

The bat colony has 1.5 MILLION bats, not "hundreds." Nitpicky? Sure, but the entire novel is an exercise in a form of nitpicking: sorting through all the tiny clues to divine what happened to Owen, and as it turns out divining Bailey's past while they're at it.

A few references make it sound like Dave's never been to Austin, period. She references "the lake muted outside the car windows" near the end, the problem being that the lake in question can't be seen from the road at all. (It's a manmade reservoir in the Hill Country – another Dave error btw (she refers to it as "Texas Hill Country," without the "the" – kinda the opposite of L.A. screenwriters who refers to freeways as "the 101" or "the 10," when in Texas I-35 is just called "35.") Hannah's hotel has a jampacked bar at 10am on a weekday; even the SXSW festival isn't that rowdy! And Downtown Austin is supposedly "lined with packed sidewalk cafes" – again, on weekdays: this wasn't true even before Covid, and isn't true today.

Another road error: near the end, out near the lake, they drive onto "Ranch Road." Dave should've done more homework on Texas's admittedly unique road-naming conventions. Texas has Ranch Roads (RRs). It also has Farm-to-Market Roads (FMs) and Ranch-to-Market Roads (RMs). It does not have a "Ranch Road," sans number. (Texas has over 3,500 FM / RR / RM roadways.) The only RR near an Austin-area lake is Ranch Road 620, which everyone calls 620 and absolutely no one calls "Ranch Road" (or even "Ranch Road 620" - it's just "620").

Going briefly to New York: Hannah's studio and shop are in SoHo. If she was a trust-fund brat who could afford $50,000-a-month retail rents, that'd be one thing, but we know she's not. Unfortunately Laura Dave apparently doesn't know that the SoHo art scene peaked in the '80s and was largely gentrified out of existence 20+ years ago; the upscale galleries are in West Chelsea, but Hannah's studio would more realistically be somewhere like Bushwick or Bed-Stuy. (Almost no galleries rely on foot traffic for any real business nowadays; it's all online.)

Switching back to the Bay Area: Dave admittedly does Sausalito justice. It's a gorgeous and slightly bizarre area – permanent houseboats aren't exactly commonplace in the US! – but Dave unfortunately derails a bit when the characters venture beyond it. Again, it's the nitpicky details: instead of much-closer SFO or Oakland, Hannah & Bailey fly to Austin out of San Jose. (Even Santa Rosa would be closer than San Jose!) Almost every scene in San Francisco is set in or across from the Ferry Building, as if it's the only thing aside from cable cars that non-locals would know about.

Onto a slightly more touchy subject: the characters in the book are EXTREMELY white. And heterosexual. In San Francisco. (The series wisely fixed this bit, turning Hannah's BFF Jules gay and Bailey's boyfriend Asian-American, plus Grady is Latino in it.) There's only a single person of color even referenced, but they don't have an active role in the plot and I can't say anything about said person without spoilers.

Okay, screw it: I think I need to delve into the spoilers...

SPOILER ALERT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

When I started watching the TV series, it was obvious in the first episode that Owen left for reasons wholly separate from everything going on at work. I literally said to my family – jokingly, or so I thought – that the most totally cliche & ridiculous explanation would be him running from the mob.

<facepalm>

The mafia. IN TEXAS?!? I realize it's fiction, but the drug trade in the Southwest US has been entirely under Mexican-cartel control for a VERY long time, particularly in Texas itself. And speaking of fiction, the book's suggestion that Bailey's mom was killed because she was clerking for a "Texas Supreme Court judge" – another error (they're justices, not judges) – who was a far-leftist (!!) about to somehow singlehandedly issue a ruling that would ruin Big Oil (?!?), and she was murdered to "send a message."

In a book that already requires substantial suspension of disbelief, this is the single most ridiculous notion proffered. Texas is the energy capital of the world. Its state supreme court is 100% Republican – and like the U.S. Supreme Court, it has nine justices, and no single one of them can do jack by themselves – and even when it wasn't, it never issued any rulings that negatively impacted the oil-and-gas-industry in any substantive way. The entire point of the so-called "Texas miracle" (its strong economy) is predicated on essentially zero oversight (or as close to it as possible) of the oil industry.

I get that the point of this tale was to humanize Nicholas, despite Hannah already knowing he's a monster, and to further amplify the novel's core point about truly knowing people, but I thought it was extraneous & distracting, especially given its level of absurdity in the context of actual Texas life. (Also, Nicholas is the one who uses the term "Texas Supreme Court judges." A real Texas lawyer, and certainly one of his level of renown, would know they're justices.)

And yet, despite all my complaining, I enjoyed the book and did a speed-read of it in under 48 hours. (Seriously!) As I'd expect from any novel optioned by Hello Sunshine, it has exceptionally strong, well-written female characters, all of whom readily pass the Bechdel test (despite the story, at least at the surface level, focusing on finding a man two women desperately miss). Even after seeing it shown on TV, I was surprised to see a reference as specific as UT's Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL); now THAT is the level of attention to detail I appreciate, and it's the real-life place where a former UT student would go to look up something like a yearbook.

Dave even makes Hannah's astoundingly ballsy choice at the end – cutting Owen/Ethan out of her life, for Bailey's sake – believable, with the admittedly clever conceit of having the Big Bad be a mob lawyer, not a mafioso, and one who wanted to have a role in his granddaughter's life despite blaming Ethan for Kate's death. I did not see that coming on the series, but Jennifer Garner NAILED IT in that scene as well. (Also, the series allowed for scenes the book's structure – wholly from Hannah's POV – did not, e.g. Bailey meeting her extended family.)

But maybe spend a few weeks in a city first before you decide to set two-thirds of your next novel there?

The middle 30% was pretty good for a beach read. The beginning failed to introduce the characters. Hannah is pretty one-dimensional and I couldn’t figure out her career trajectory. How did she get from watching her grandfather to being featured in Architectural Digest and having repeat millionaire/billionaire clients? The only interesting thing about her was just skipped over.

Owen and Bailey were practically avatars. Not really even people. Bailey was obnoxious enough to qualify as the accepted definition of a teenager in 2022, but not obnoxious enough to be objectionable. We are told she is beautiful and special, but it’s definitely not shown. She was boring.

The story starts out with inadequate background and justification for Hannah moving across the county and marrying a guy with a kid she hasn’t known that long, but it’s not that bad. Then it gets sort of interesting and you really start to wonder where it’s going. The big mystery is Owen’s background. But it ends up being sorted out a little too quickly and in a way that relies on a very young child’s memory. Also, there wasn’t enough explanation of how Owen got away with concealing his identity and that could have been interesting. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone by giving too much away, but if you are going to lie about your background, wouldn’t you create details that people are less likely to be interested in or possibly check? Like maybe not say you went to Princeton? And why lie about the physical characteristics of a dead character? Maybe you don’t want a photos around because you are concealing their real identity, but is brown hair really going to give it away? First rule of lying is don’t lie if you don’t have to. Stay close to the truth.

Then, once the mystery is solved, it gets pretty bad. There is a lot of justification for really, really bad criminal behavior that the author tries to pass of as some sort of good and bad in everyone nonsense. And Hannah, who you really don’t care about, has to make a BIG DECISION that is tied into a whole motherhood and family thing in a very heavy-handed way.

But, honestly, the thing the bugged me the most was that a bad guy had two dogs that were supposed to be threatening and in the midst of Schutzhound training. They were Labrador retrievers. Why didn’t she also add in some cops doing a drug bust with a Maltese? Do publishing houses just not pay editors anymore or was this a laughable attempt to suggest ambiguity in the bad guy character? It was ridiculous either way, so I couldn’t tell.