Review with Spoilers for The Night We Lost Him

Arts Tribune

2 weeks ago

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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 and protected spoilers.

Spoiler Review for The Night We Lost Him. The book's cover, which shows a beach at night, on a dark blue green background

The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave

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 was 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

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.

Characters

Nora and her fiancé Jack
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

To protect readers who HATE being spoiled you will need to log in with your email or social media account. By doing so, you will be added to my email list and receive awesome weekly updates about new books! For more information on why I protect my spoilers, please read this post! If you are having any issues PLEASE leave a comment as I want to help!

What Happened The Night We Lost Him: the Night Liam Noone died?

I had SO many theories, all of which were wrong:

That Liam Noone was Liam “No One” under an assumed identity. I LOVED this theory. Sadly, I was wrong.
That Cece (Cecelia?) and Cody (Cordelia) were the same person or twins. Wrong.
That there was something weird around the parentage of Nora, Sam and Tommy as the book kept saying how much Nora and Tommy looked alike. Wrong.
That Grace or Cody or Cece was actually Nora’s mother. I don’t think so, and if you disagree, explain in comments. For a mystery, this book is not very fact-centered, which I’ll get into below.
That Nora was in danger. Wrong.

So, what DID happen to Liam?

One thing that struck me about this book? How many ex-partners everyone had. It made for a lot of random characters. Liam not only had three ex-wives, he had “Cody,” his high school crush that he was in a longtime situationship with. Cece had a thing either with Joe and/or Liam. Sam had an ex and a fiancé. So did Nora.

But there was one surprise: “Cody” was actually Grace.

Liam wanted to marry Grace but she seemed like a bohemian writer type who never wanted to get married. She never really gave a reason for not marrying him. Liam finally gave up and got married to someone else. Then Grace got married too. But they continued to have a weirdly close relationship.

Liam was going to leave his company to Grace, but she died.

Paul, Grace’s husband, was the one who pushed Liam off the cliff. Paul was sneaking onto Liam’s property to scatter Grace’s ashes and Liam showed up. They argued, things got physical and Paul pushed Liam, who fell to his death.

This felt a bit anticlimactic and reminded me of this very unpopular book.

And what was with the unresolved ending of The Night We Lost Him?

After Nora and Sam confront him, Paul offers to go to the police and confess. Does he? Who knows. No one cares. Except a mystery reader!
Nora and Sam leave Paul’s apartment and proceed have an incomprehensible conversation about how our primal pain makes it difficult to love people. Because it “blocks the space between where we’ve gotten stuck and where we want to go?” Help? East Coaster here who does not speak New Age word salad and all I hear is a parallel parking analogy. I guess this is why all these characters can’t stick to one person EVER.
We have no idea what happens to Paul and HIS primal pain about the fact that, as Princess Diana famously said, there were three people in this marriage, as his wife had been in love with another man for decades.
After this amazing revelation about primal pain Nora decides that Jack “will be the person I recognize before I even know who I see.” What?
Nora goes and finds Jack, her fiancé and tells him they should go out for ice cream. The end.
This is why to a true mystery reader, The Night We Lost Him is about the great mysteries of life which is NOT the same as a mystery novel.

Whew. I am exhausted. Please tell me what you thought of this book in comments and let’s talk about it. Spoilers are fine!

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