My Review with Spoilers for the Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave will discuss what kind of book this was, anyway? How similar is it to The Last Thing He Told Me? And most importantly, will YOU like it? Let’s discuss! This post contains a plot summary, protected spoilers, and the ending explained.
The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave
- Published on September 17, 2024 by Simon & Schuster
- 320 pages
- Also by this Author: Hello Sunshine and the Reese’s Book Club pick and Apple TV Movie The Last Thing He Told Me
The Night We Lost Him: Jen’s Quick Take
- Follows a very similar format as The Last Thing He Told Me, which I will describe below
- It’s a stretch to call either book mystery or suspense, which I will also discuss below.
- Based on my own categorization rules, I’d call this a very loose amateur detective story.
- The TL;DR: The Night We Lost Him also reads a lot like women’s fiction, featuring an aspirational travelogue and interesting family drama elements. If you liked The Last Thing He Told Me, you will probably like this.
- BUT I think that The Last Thing He Told Me is a better book, with more dramatic tension and more well developed characters.
- The Last Thing He Told Me also had a major unresolved element, and there will be a sequel coming out next year.
Review for for The Night We Lost Him: Table of Contents
- How The Night We Lost Him is VERY Similar to The Last Thing He Told Me (below)
- Character List for The Night We Lost Him
- Spoilers for The Night We Lost Him
- How Did Liam Noone Die in The Night We Lost Him?
If you’ve read The Last Thing He Told Me, then The Night We Lost Him might feel familiar in concept and structure.
- A female main character with a creative, New Age-y job (artist/wood turner or neuro-architect.) Both women will use their job to make analogies about life and love
- An absent male character who leaves behind a big mystery (either a new husband or a father)
- Main character pairs up with a family member with whom she has a prickly relationship (I will call them the “Prickly Pair”)
- The Prickly Pair travels extensively to investigate the secrets of the absent male character and explore their shared grief over his absence.
- The travel involves hip, upscale/aspirational locations (Sausalito, Austin, Santa Barbara, NYC’s West Village and Brooklyn)
- Plot that involves the Prickly Pair running around talking to a bunch of people, many of whom are difficult, misleading, obstructive, forgetful, or secretive.
- There’s a lot of money involved, even though everyone involved has plenty of it already.
- There’s also a Mystery Woman who could be the key to everything.
Summary of the Book’s Premise
- Nora has lost both her mother and her father in the past year, her mother in a biking accident and her father from a fall.
- She’s contacted by her (somewhat estranged) half-brother Sam, who insists that their father Liam’s death was suspicious.
- Sam convinces Nora to fly from Brooklyn to the Santa Barbara area, where they both start looking into their father’s death. He died after falling from a cliff near his house late one evening.
- The police have classified Liam’s death as accidental, but Nora begins to think Sam might be right
- They fly back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast multiple times and talk to a LOT of people: Liam’s brother Joe, his lawyer, the woman Liam was thinking of selling his company to, the widower of Liam’s former business partner, the woman who found Liam’s body.
Character List for The Night We Lost Him
- Nora
- Jack, Nora’s fiancé
- Nora’s father Liam Noone, and his three wives: Nora’s mother (do we ever learn her hame?) Sylvia, and Inez
- Liam’s brother Joe
- A mysterious woman named Cece Sheridan, who might or might not have been romantically involved with Liam and/or Joe
- Another mysterious woman named Cody (Cordelia) who seemed to be involved with Liam
- Sam and his brother Tommy, the children of Liam and Sylvia
- Grace, who worked with Liam and was, along with Joe, his trusted advisor. She died recently of a heart attack.
- Grace’s widower Paul
- Elliot, Nora’s ex, and his son Austin
Spoilers for The Night We Lost Him
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What Happened The Night We Lost Him: the Night Liam Noone died?
Whew. I am exhausted. Please tell me what you thought of this book in comments and let’s talk about it. Spoilers are fine!
Haha. I love your review! I just finished this book, and I enjoyed it (4 stars) because I love family drama. I 100% agree that it’s not a mystery/suspense, but I really like Laura Dave’s writing; it’s so easy to read. I enjoyed the drama and the characters, and the plot was enough for me. I also thought Cece and Cody were going to be the same person. I had kind of forgotten about Grace. I think they let Paul go in the end. I don’t think he went to the police. I think Nora and Sam felt he was justified after the life-long affair Grace/Cody was having with Liam.
Hi Kate and thanks so much for weighing in!
I really enjoyed both this and The Last Thing He Told Me but am really side-eyeing the new trend of calling things a thriller or mystery when they are really not. Glad I wasn’t the only one on the Cece/Cody train. And I agree about Paul.
what is your take on why Cody and Liam never married? I’m thinking of one sentence in the book referring to “Jack”
Do you mean the scene towards the end when Nora thinks about Liam’s hand on Cody’s hip?
Not sure why they never married except that the author’s prior book also had the “tragic couple who can’t be together” trope. It really got people talking at the end of her last book, and she leaves another couple dangling a bit in this one.
I discuss Cody and Liam’s relationship a little in the post – Cody seems like a free spirit who doesn’t want to be tied down. It’s not explained much more than that.
Who was Cece? Did the book ever say?
I think in the end she was 1) a college classmate of Liam, 2) a person Cordelia was somewhat jealous of, and 3) someone who discussed buying his hotel. I thought she and Cordelia were the same person, but actually Cordelia was Grace!
I really liked the book, after we got through the very slow first third. I, too, assumed CeCe and Cory were the same person.
I think of it as a mystery-adjacent book about family dynamics. 🤷🏻♀️
Haha. And yes, I think that is a fair description!
I would say this book is only fair. I totally thought Cody was CiCi so that was a surprise. Grace was pretty undeveloped through the story. The flying across the country at the drop of a hat, the five story brownstone that was totally unappreciated by the charmless fiancé, and many other attributes of this fabulously wealthy jet set, made the characters pretty unbelievable/unrelatable for me.
i could only figure that the reason Grace refused to marry was based on an anti marriage agenda. The separation of the three families by Liam and the relative lack of animosity between his wives also seemed suspect.
I did like Nora and enjoyed her quotes and thoughts about architecture.
Overall, meh!
I agree with you. It was okay, but not great!