Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. It’s an engaging mystery, and a story of two women bonding amid a crisis, but it is never bleak.īefore Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her.ĭespite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. If you want a thriller that will keep you reading all night without any violence or scariness, this is the book for you. In fact the twist at the end of this book is bittersweet, poignant, and deeply satisfying. I don’t want to spoil the mystery for anyone, but while he is guilty of deception and gaslighting, Owen is not a serial killer. However, while the answer to that question is often “a total monster” in other books, that’s not the case here. Plenty of psychological thrillers have the theme of “I don’t know who I married,” and this is no exception. Watching their relationship grow from a place of uncertainty to love was wonderful to read about. Bailey is very much sixteen, sometimes overtly hostile to Hannah, sometimes desperately needing to be comforted by her. Bailey, traumatized by her father’s disappearance, joins Hannah in the search and realizes that memories from her early childhood don’t gel with the stories her father has told her.Ī big part of this book is Hannah and Bailey coming together as a family in order to solve the mystery of Owen’s disappearance. Hannah begins searching for her husband, only to discover along the way that he was lying about his past. Owen’s boss has been arrested, and Owen himself has vanished after leaving Hannah a note that reads, “protect her.” Hannah learns the tech start up he’s been working at, The Shop, has been raided by the FBI for fraud after lying about their product and cheating investors out of billions of dollars. Two years after their wedding, Owen fails to come home from work and stops answering his phone. When Hannah Hall marries single dad Owen, she struggles to connect to his distant teenage daughter, Bailey. It’s a fascinating book, but not a dark one, and I think it will appeal to a lot of readers who want to wade into the genre without worrying about potentially upsetting themes. The Last Thing He Told Me is an excellently plotted psychological thriller, but unlike many books in that genre it has no violence, gore or abuse. The next time I looked up I had finished The Last Thing He Told Me and, aside from my reading light, the house was pitch dark.

At some point I remember my husband telling me he was going to bed and me telling him I’d be right up.

I am writing this while sleep deprived, guzzling a cold brew, having stayed up all night reading.

The last thing he said to me