My Readers Guide to The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave looks at this sequel to the bestselling book The Last Thing He Told Me, which was also adapted into an Apple TV series. This post includes a character list, a quick recap for The Last Thing He Told Me, Spoilers for The First Time I Saw Him, and the ending explained. UPDATED with a comparison to the book The First Time I Saw Him and season 2 of The Last Thing I Told Him on Apple TV.
Readers Guide to The First Time I Saw Him
Table of Contents (click to open)
Jen’s Quick Take on The First Time I Saw Him
Character List for The First Time I Saw Him
What You Need to Remember About The Last Thing He Told Me
Plot Summary for The First Time I Saw Him (under spoiler protection)
Plot Summary for The First Time I Saw Him (under spoiler protection)
The First Time I Saw Him Ending Explained (under spoiler protection)
Jen’s Quick Take on The First Time I Saw Him
- The First Time I Saw Him is a sequel to The Last Thing He Told Me
- If you loved the first book and found the ending frustrating, this book is for you!
- If you loved the first book and had questions, this book is for you!
- The First Time I Saw Him offers clarification and a definitive ending that I think many readers will appreciate. It doesn’t really take the story in any new directions, but it did answer questions that I and other readers had and I appreciated that!
- Publication Date: January 6, 2026 by Scribner. Thanks to them for the advance copy.
Character List for The First Time I Saw Him
Hannah and her extended family:
- Hannah Hall: stepmom to Bailey Michaels
- Owen Michaels (Ethan Young): Hannah’s husband
- Bailey Michaels (Kristin Young)
- Charlie Smith: Owen’s brother-in-law
- Nicholas Bell: Owen’s father-in-law
- Kate Smith: Bailey’s late mother
- Shep: Bailey’s boyfriend
Returning Characters:
- Grady Bradford: US Marshal in charge of Owen’s witness protection
- Jules: close friend of Hannah; journalist
- Carl and Patty: friends of Owen
- Daniel: Carl’s brother
- Jake: Hannah’s ex-fiance
New Characters:
- Frank Campano Pointe: head of “the Organization”
- Jenny: Frank’s late wife
- Quinn, Teddy, Dominic, Sarah, Elena, Bradley: Frank’s children
What You Need to Remember About The Last Thing He Told Me
If you remember the last chapter of The Last Thing He Told Me, you’ll see it again as this book’s first chapter.
Five years have passed since Owen vanished.
Quick Summary of The Last Thing He Told Me:
(if you want the extended version, go read my Plot Summary for The Last Thing He Told Me):
Newlywed and new stepmom Hannah Hall is shocked when her husband Owen disappears, leaving a bag of money and a cryptic note: “keep her safe.”
The “her” refers to Bailey, Owen’s teenage daughter. Hannah and Bailey embark on a journey to unravel the mystery of Owen’s disappearance.
Hannah learns that her husband “Owen” is actually Ethan Young, a tech worker who helped his mafia lawyer father-in-law, Nicholas Bell, with some file encryption.
But after his wife (Nicholas’s daughter, Kate) died in a mysterious hit-and-run, Ethen agreed to provide information to the Feds that sent Nicholas to prison.
After that, Ethan entered witness protection with his young daughter, Kristin.
When Ethan (under his new name owen Owen) learns that his current employer is being investigated by the SEC and FBI, he realizes that his fake identity will be exposed, blowing up his new life and endangering Kristin (now Bailey). So he goes on the run.
Hannah confronts Nicholas Bell, now out of prison, and makes a deal with him: in exchange for access to his granddaughter, he will give Hannah his word that she and Bailey will be safe.
In exchange, But Nicholas is clear: Owen’s betrayal is unforgivable and he will have to stay in hiding.
All this felt VERY hand-wavey to many of us and we had questions:
- Was Bailey’s mother Kate’s hit-and-run death an accident or murder? In The Last Thing He Told Me, Nicholas tells Hannah that Kate’s death had to do with her work and nothing to do with his employers.
- Did Kate die before or after Owen turned on The Organization? It’s a little unclear. Did Ethan agreed to give evidence due to his anger at her death? Or was her death because he testified?
- How did Nicholas get his employers to leave Bailey and Hannah alone?
Spoilers below but please feel free to leave questions in the comment section. There may be spoilers in the comments, so beware!
Plot Summary for The First Time I Saw Him
Owen makes his appearance at Hannah’s exhibition. We learn that five years have passed since the first book.
We learn how Owen fled California:
After Hannah’s best friend Jules tipped Owen off that his firm was about to be raided by the FBI, he sprang into action. He headed to a safe deposit box, grabbing cash, fake passports and a phone with a VPN. He drove to Seattle and then got on a bus to Canada.
Now, in the present of the book, Owen heads back to Austin to visit his father-in-law.
Hannah Gets a Mysterious Message
Back in Los Angeles, Hannah gets a phone call from a Sydney area code with a text that says to check her pocket. She finds a flash drive, which Owen must have slipped there when he visited the exhibition.
Just then, an unexpected repair man shows up at the door. Which is not suspicious at all! But of course Hannah has a plan.
Bailey and Hannah Both Flee
Bailey’s Uncle Charlie calls and says to find Hannah and get somewhere safe.
Meanwhile, Hannah grabs her go bag and climbs out of a window, sneaking through the neighbors house (they gave her a key) to a back alley. She runs to the nearest hotel and gets a taxi.
Bailey sneaks out of her apartment building to an underground garage where she has a secret car waiting for just this purpose
Hannah gets shocking news
At her ex-boyfriend Jake’s (empty) house, she calls Grady Bradford, Owen’s US Marshal contact.
Inside Jake’s house, she turns on the news to see that Nicholas Bell, Owen’s father-in-law, has died. Grady thinks it was a heart attack, but he can’t get more information.
Grady reminds Hannah that with Nicholas dead, his “organization” mafia can come after Owen, Bailey, and Hannah.
Grady says that someone who identified himself as Nicholas’s son-in-law arrived at Nicholas’s condo in Austin.
Hannah feels this has to be connected: Owen showing up in Austin and Nicholas dying.
Hannah puts Owen’s flash drive into a clean laptop that happens to all ready at Jake’s house and finds five photo albums: Sausalito, honeymoon, Bailey, family, Hannah’s work. Hannah knows that this is a message only SHE can decipher. But there’s no time for that: they have to get out of the house.
Hannah has a plan: take the back roads to Santa Cruz, where Jules’s friend has a boat.
Hannah calls Owen’s close friend Carl, because he is in some of the photos on the flash drive. Carl’s wife Patty says she needs to talk to Daniel, a pilot. They need to be at the Napa County airport the next morning.
When they reach the house of Jules‘s friend in Santa Cruz, Jules calls and says that it seems like Nicholas died in his sleep of a heart attack. She also says that Frank (head of “The Organization”) is handing things over to his six children.
Let’s Go to Paris
Daniel meets them at the airport with fake passports. They are heading to Paris, where Owen and Hannah went on their honeymoon. Hannah looks for clues in the “honeymoon” photo folder. She feels like there’s one photo that doesn’t belong in the honey room album, and that is of a painting in the south of France.
They land in Paris and head to the hotel that Hannah and Owen honeymooned at. They expect to see Owen waiting for them, but instead it’s …
Nicholas, who is alive!
Where Was Owen Those Five Years?
He was in New Zealand working at a winery, using the name Luke, and working for an old friend of his mother’s.
Then he sent Nicholas a letter with a message: if anything happens to you, they will be in danger.
Nicholas and Owen have a super-secret meeting in Hawaii. During that time they organize all the information they have about the organization. Frank Campano Pointe, head of The Organization, is grooming Quinn and Teddy to take over his position.
Owen and Nicholas make a plan for Owen to return to the United States. Nicholas says they won’t get out of this alive.
Back in Paris, Nicholas tells Hannah what he and Owen have been up to.
The first part of their plan: leak information about Nicholas’s heart condition to see what would happen. Their prediction was that as soon as Nicholas was dead, Quinn and Teddy would renege on the agreement and come after Owen, Hannah and Bailey.
Nicholas bribed the Texas coroner to make a fake death certificate.
Frank is celebrating his 80th birthday in the south of France with his entire family. How convenient!
Hannah and Nicholas stay up late planning for the party
Meanwhile, Owen is in the south of France headed to a boat. Bailey goes to the Picasso museum to find a painting that Hannah noticed in Owen‘s photos: Ulysses and Sirens. Owen shows up.
Hannah and Nicholas head to the party
Security is confiscating electronics. Hannah has an iPad but pretends it’s a child monitor thing. Even though Bailey is twenty!
Frank is surprised to see Nicholas, who is supposed to be dead.
Nicholas says if he and Hannah don’t walk out of there in twenty minutes, a bunch of documents will be sent to Grady and the US Attorney’s office.
The Pointes are annoyed. This is a BIRTHDAY PARTY.
Nicholas claims they put a “bounty” on Bailey. Did I miss this?
Nicholas pulls out the tablet which is filled with every document Nicholas collected and went to jail for rather than produce them for the authorities.
The Pointe family points out that he was their lawyer, which means that the documents were covered by attorney-client privilege. Nicholas says he was disbarred AND committing crimes, so he was acting as part of The Organization, not as a lawyer.
Nicholas points out that the surveillance they have on the entire Pointe family implicates every single one of them for racketeering, money laundering, extortion, and conspiracy.
There’s a lot of arguing and then … a gunshot.
There’s a flashback to four years ago, when Nicholas asked Frank when he found out that someone in his organization killed Kate. Apparently Kate was alarmed that Owen was working with her father and started asking around about Frank and The Organization. Frank admits Quinn ordered the hit on Kate.
Back in the present, Nicholas drops to the ground. He’s been shot in the shoulder, but it’s just a graze.
Owen has been watching the whole thing through Hannah’s tablet.
Quinn is upset. Hannah basically accuses Quinn of having something to do with Kate’s death. Quinn still claims that it was an accident.
Quinn says in this family, nothing ends and there’s always a cost.
What is the ending of The First Time I Saw Him?
One year ago, Frank and Nicholas met. Owen walks in and Nicholas tells Frank he needs his favor.
In the present, Frank tells Nicholas a sacrifice will be necessary, which I suppose means Nicholas.
Hannah is upset that Nicholas didn’t tell her that Frank was in on the plan.
Bailey, Hannah, and Owen are finally united. Hannah and Owen are going to make wine and wooden bowls together.
I’m not sure a whole book was necessary for this, but okay.
- The book goes back to the themes of family, love, sacrifice, and revenge.
- Owen sacrifices his old life for Bailey’s safety, and then Nicholas does that again by (presumably) sacrificing himself so that Owen can be safe.
- But what happens when Frank dies? Is there another book here?
The timeline of Kate’s death is still confusing to me:
- Kate is alarmed that Ethan/Owen is working for her father’s employer and asks around to see if they are being investigated.
- Kate is killed by a hit and run driver
- In The Last Thing He Told Me, Grady tells Hannah, “After Kate was killed, Owen hacked into the system and turned everything over to us.” So, Owen did this AFTER Kate died.
- BUT Frank tells Nicholas that Quinn ordered the hit on Kate for revenge: “she wasn’t thinking clearly. She was too wrapped up in her own pain. Her own anger. About what was happening with her husband.” How can Quinn have hired a hit on Kate as revenge for Owen’s testimony sending her husband to prison if Owen did that AFTER Kate died. THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Am I missing something?
Thoughts on this book as adapted as Season Two of The Last Thing He Told Me
I’ll be calling The Last Thing He Told Me “book one,” The First Time I Saw Him “book two,” and the series “season one” and “season two.
My thoughts on book two are above. Overall, it felt less like a sequel to me and more like adding plot that probably would have been there if this had started as a suspense book or a movie.
Book two does feel a bit more cinematic. Owen, Bailey and even Nicholas are given a POV.
Similar to my thoughts on the adaptation of The Last Thing He Told Me (season 1), this show has:
- more tension and suspense
- been expanded to give Bailey more to do
- brought back Grady and Jake (who are mentioned in book two but don’t play a role
- created even more tension by expanding Quinn’s role and making her a close friend of Kate, Bailey’s mother.
The Last Thing He Told Me Season Two, Episode One: Cape Cod
This episode follows the book pretty closely:
- Owen pops up at Hannah’s show (as in the ending of book one)
FIVE DAYS EARLIER
- Owen then goes to his job at the docks (in the book I think he works at a winery) where he is spying on Teddy Campano (in the book head of the crime family is Frank Campano Pointe)
- Hannah and Bailey attend Frank’s birthday party in Austin. They make a LOT of a game called Codenames (an espionage board game). They take about it so much that it has to come in later.
- Owen is working with Grady, the US marshal who was in charge of him during witness protection. Grady is a much bigger part of the show than the book.
- Back in Los Angeles, Hannah has a boxing lesson (part of her 5 year long contingency plan?)
- Bailey also decides to meet with Quinn Campano to find out more about her mother. This did not happen in the book.
- Hannah finds a locket in her pocket that Owen must have put there.
- Owen is downloading docs that belong to Nicholas Bell
- Hannah gets a text that says “get out of the house.” She and Bailey execute an obviously well thought-out plan: toss their phones, get documents from the bank, get a car out of a storage unit and hit the road, staying at The Cape Cod Inn.
- At the end of the episode, Charlie calls Hannah and says that Nicholas Bell is dead.
My Questions:
- Can anyone explain the “Cape Cod” clue? I didn’t write it down!
The Last Thing He Told Me Season Two, Episode Two: Safe
This episode has almost nothing that is in the book, since Grady was barely in the book and Quinn is peripheral.
- Grady shows up at the Cape Cod Inn. Owen sent Grady to check on them
- Bailey is angry that men are bossing her around. Hannah agrees. Grady needs to start sharing information with them.
- Grady and Hannah recap the main plot of The First Time I Saw Him: Owen is afraid that the deal that Nicholas made with Frank Campano for the safety won’t hold if Nicholas dies.
- Thus, the only way to be safe: take out the Campanos.
- Owen, as we saw in episode one, is collecting information about a Campano-owned company called Rafina. The Campanos are using it to smuggle drugs.
- Bailey suggests they use Quinn as an intermediary to send the Campanos a message.
- Owen is in an office building photographing documents. He’s nearly caught but escapes.
- Hannah, concerned about Grady’s demeanor, tries to call the US Marshals office and Grady catches her, telling her he thinks there’s a Campano mole in his office.
- Grady then gets into a fight with a biker. Hannah tells Bailey they are better on their own.
- They sneak out in the middle of the night, narrowly missing some Campano thugs.
- In a funny shout-out to Beverly Hills Cop, they put a banana in Grady’s tailpipe.
- Hannah and Bailey head back to L.A. and approach Quinn at the coffee shop.
- Quinn tells them they will have to let Ethan go.
- She’s annoyed, but tells her brother Teddy to leave them alone.
- Hannah and Bailey head to stay with Hannah’s mother, who abandoned her at age six. No one will look for them there!
The Last Thing He Told Me: Season Two, Episode Three: Reunion
This episode played out VERY differently than in the book. In this episode of the series, Hannah’s long-lost mother isn’t so lost! And there’s a lot of EXPOSITION and emotional exploration.
- Hannah and Bailey arrive at the Arizona home of Hannah’s estranged mother, Carol (Carole in book one). Things are a little tense
- Meanwhile in Austin, Grady is also tense as he prepares to send an undercover officer to gather damaging evidence about Teddy Campano
- Owen shows up to this weird reunion in Arizona (in the book it happens in Paris, and without Carol/e)
- There’s a lot of exposition in this book. We’re again reminded that Owen, Bailey and Hannah can’t be together unless the Campanos are neutralized.
- Hannah and Bailey bond over parental abandonment.
- Bailey calls her boyfriend on her burner phone just as Owen is telling Hannah not to use hers.
- Teddy sends minions to Arizona to find our trio on the run.
- Meanwhile, Grady’s undercover source is exposed and tortured for information.
- Hannah manages to throw off their Campano tail, but there’s another one!
My Questions:
- What is with the pendant that Hannah is wearing that looks like a compass? There was a compass in the book, but not a necklace!
- Hannah tells Bailey that no one testified against the Campanos, but I thought that was the entire plot of book one: Ethan testifying about Nicholas Bell’s work for the family.
Please leave thoughts, corrections, and questions below in the comment section!
I don’t want to be spoiled so I didn’t click on the review, but still wanted to pop in and say hello! I hope 2026 is an amazing year for you!
Aw, thanks so much! Happy 2026 to you too!
**SPOILER** In regards to Kate’s death, Frank tells Nicholas that Quinn was responsible, but her goal was to scare Kate for looking into Frank/his family’s activities (not kill her). Quinn becomes more antagonistic towards Owen and his family after Kate’s death, because Owen’s testimony sends Quinn’s husband to jail. Thanks for the summary! It helped clarify things once I finished the book.
Thanks, Priyeah! I’m so glad it was helpful. Are you watching season 2 of the show in Feb? It’s supposed to be based on this book!
I really enjoyed this duology but have always felt that Laura Dave’s strength is in her characters and their relationships. As a thriller reader, I feel like when she gets into the crime stuff, things get hand-wavey.
Quinn hires someone to scare Kate .. with a car? But then they accidentally hit her?! To me that’s a bit weird, and sounds like a lie. Also the book has Frank say that Quinn did it because of her anger over her husband taking the fall, but that could definitely be Frank making excuses for her.