This book will tear your heart apart and piece it back together. Top 5 read of the year. I wish I could read it all over again for the first time. So many thoughts and feelings. A true love story you will never see coming. TBR it right now. You do not want to miss this as your next year. You will want to own a copy to live forever on your bookshelf.


Thank you thank you Netgalley & Simon Element at Simon & Schuster for this Advanced readers Copy. I can’t wait till this book hits the shelf to recommend it to so many readers and buy one for my own bookshelf.

The Night We Lost Him is a beautifully written story about siblings grieving the loss of their father’s sudden passing. While Laura Dave’s newest novel is categorized as a mystery/ suspenseful story, I would be hesitant to classify it as such. There are elements of unknown and investigation woven through the plot, but the overall story mostly focuses on a brother and sister navigating the uncharted territory that is their father’s death and how he had secretly lived his life.
The unfinished character development of one brother and a fiancé left me curious as to what their role might have been in earlier versions of the story.

I feel like I can’t avoid my honest opinion about this one without a few minor spoilers so watch out ahead y’all 🛑✋🏼

after being the only person in the world who enjoyed THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME, I was super invested in this story from the first chapter. it started out more of the same concept, marketed as a mystery but involved more family drama and lit fic elements more than anything.

after the death of their father (#1 trigger for us in the dead dad club heyyy), liam’s children are out to discover the truth behind who their dad was and what happened to him the night of his death. and while I loved the mystery air surrounding it, it was truly the bonding moments between nora and sam that made the story as raw and real as it was!!

what didn’t work for me were the flashbacks of liam growing up and his unique friendship with cory. it gave all of the emotional cheating vibes, and even a little bit of unrequited love, and that’s not the move for me 😅 I just didn’t understand the reasoning why these two, if they were so truly in love with one another, couldn’t be together? like genuinely besties I have no clue

and I’m also a firm believer that choosing to replace someone or something in your heart when you’re not ready to move on is never the solution and only hurts everyone in the process (and that’s the tea 🍵)

I really do love laura dave’s writing style, and I flew through this one in a day to find out how the conflict resolved! thank you to netgalley and simon & schuster for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

rating: 3.5 stars
wine pairing: napa valley chardonnay

Very good read. Kept me guessing how things were going to wind up. So interesting the depth of the relationships in this book.

I loved The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave when I read it in 2001. So I was excited to see she had another book coming out this year. While The Night We Lost Him is a good book, it definitely didn’t live up to the suspense I was expecting. I liked the book, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had it been described as a family drama rather than a thriller. And maybe it was my own assumption that led me astray. While I appreciated the character development as the story progressed, it was too slow for my liking. I wouldn’t recommend this to friends as a thriller, but I would definitely recommend it to someone looking for a good family drama.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

This novel reads more as a love story with a mystery focusing on a mysterious girl. Liam Noone has fallen off the cliff at Windbreak, his beloved getaway home. Nora, who recently lost her mother, is now almost running on empty as she goes about her day. Her fiancé and those around her can tell she is going through a lot of pain. Sam, her half-brother, calls and tells her he believes someone pushed their father off the cliff. He wants her to join him at the ‘scene of the crime’ to help determine if he’s right and to get answers from everyone, including the inept sheriff and Uncle Joe.
As they speak to various people, they discover their father holds many secrets. The question arises, ‘How well did we know him?”



I love the intricate layers of Liam’s character. It pains me to see Nora grappling with the realization that she never truly knew her father. Since her mother’s death, she has distanced herself even further from him. The story can be slow at times, but the ending was a complete surprise—I genuinely didn’t see it coming. The narrative is captivating, especially as I was eager to uncover the mysterious woman’s identity. However, I found Nora’s interactions with Jack quite irritating and couldn’t bring myself to care for her character. I loved that the author went back in time in chronological order as we were able to see the real Liam and how he grew up to be the hotel motel he was before his fall.



I wish to thank NetGalley and Simon Element (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) for an e-copy for an honest review.

I hate that I didn’t love this, but I honestly had to really push myself not to give it up.

There were so many different characters and stories that I don’t feel like we really were able to connect with any of them. Then it became difficult to keep track. Nothing truly grabbed me in and made me curious like her other book.

2.5 stars rounded up. The plot was painfully slow moving and the characters not especially likable. I wanted to like it but the whole thing felt overwrought. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Liam Noone is a hotel magnate, who fell to his death off a cliff near his California home. Two of his children don’t think it is an accident and they start to investigate, only to discover Liam’s life has many stories they did not know about.

I didn’t want to out this book down, and read past my bed time a couple nights because of it! Thank you Netgalley and Simon Element (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) for an advanced copy!

Thank you to Simon Element and Simon Audio for the review copies, and a special shoutout to the indomitable Julia Whelan, who was a delight once again on the audiobook.

I’m of two minds about this book, so this is a complicated “I liked it, but it wasn’t what I expected” kind of review:

As a Family Drama: I enjoyed this as a family drama—a story rich with family lore, the complexities of grief, and the struggle to understand a father’s life and legacy. It had all the elements of a strong family drama, akin to Hello Beautiful, but fell short of fully delivering on that promise. The potential was overshadowed by the focus on the mystery surrounding the father’s death. Had the book centered more on the half-siblings, each at a crossroads in their adult lives and grappling with their father’s will, it could have been a much stronger novel.

As a Mystery: The mystery aspect never quite took off for me. It didn’t have the suspense, tension, or twists I expect from a thriller—or even a true mystery. The plot lacked the intrigue of the author’s previous works, and the reveal was unsurprising, making it hard to engage with the story on that level.

Overall, while the book had some bright spots as a family drama, the mystery element felt underwhelming and ultimately detracted from the narrative's potential.

The Night We Lost Him, by Laura Dave, is a round-about family saga, with a few twists and turns, but very little mystery. In my opinion, central to the story are two step-siblings who previously didn’t know each other very well, working together to solve the whodunnit of their father’s death, and consequently discovering a mutual respect and relationship as brother and sister. Paramount to the story are relationships; inconsequential to this reader seemed to be solving the mystery. Regardless, the story is fresh and quick-moving and will definitely be enjoyed by Ms. Dave’s many fans.

Families are messy. When step siblings lose touch, it's hard to regain the sense of family when the common parent is gone.

As Sam and Nora begin to unravel what really happened the night of their father's tragic death, they discover each other again, as well as themselves. But they also unwind all the mystery and intrigue around their father and his life.

Liam Noone was a successful hotel magnate who was also very successful in compartmentalizing his various families. Sam and Nora dig into it all to find the truth.

I recommend this book for the mystery, for the relationships and the characters.

I was given this book by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own,

I enjoyed this thriller/suspense novel about Nora trying to learn more about her father after his mysterious passing. The book includes flash backs to Liam's (Nora's father) POV throughout this novel as Nora gets closer and closer to discovering the truth. I wish the chapters were more clearly labeled when they were Nora vs. Liam but maybe that is fixed in the finished copy. This is a slower thriller/suspense pace, which I found very enjoyable. If goodreads allowed me half stars this would be a 3.5 ⭐️rating and perfect for a fall thriller read.

I think this was a really well done domestic thriller. I’m not always a fan of this category but this one did pull me in quickly. It’s twisty and turny and I could not figure out who the mystery person was (which hey I pride myself on figuring these things out early). I recommend this one if you are a fan of this category!

Thank you to Netgalley & Simon & Schuster for approving me for this ARC. The Last Thing He Told Me was one of my favorite books of 2023, so I immediately requested The Night We Lost Him. I sped through the book, just like her previous thriller book, even though many people will find it a slow-paced read. It hooked me from the very first page to the very last. The story follows Nora and her estranged brother, Sam, whose father, Liam, just fell to his death. The police rule it as accidental, but to Nora and Sam, something feels off. Nora and Sam form an unlikely alliance to figure out the mysteries about their father's past, and what happened during that fateful night. Even though this book is advertised as a thriller novel, it is so much more than that. Liam Noone is friendly with all three of his ex-wives, and is still involved with all three of his children, but makes sure to keep everyone carefully separated. He spent most of his time at Windbreak, where he would go to spend some time alone, and with the mysterious woman in his life. Sam convinces Nora to fly from New York to Windbreak to start finding out some secrets their father is hiding. The story jumps between Nora & Sam, and Liam Noone's character with the mysterious woman of his past and it was my favorite part of the book. I loved the romance aspect of the book. Even though their father was having an affair, it felt like the meaning behind all of it was that your true love will always find a way to come back to you, and you should embrace it. Also, the family drama was just right for a Laura Dave book. I thought I had it figured out in the end, but I ended up being very shocked by the true ending, but it was perfect so I was very pleased. I love not guessing the true end of a thriller book. Overall, I loved it. I can't wait to see what Laura Dave is going to come up with next.

The blurb describes this book as "riveting" and I could not agree more. I love the structure of the novel, flipping back and forth between present day Nora and a chronological history of Liam. This book fascinated me and I could not put it down. I did figure out the twist relatively early, but I still enjoyed the journey. If I had to nitpick one thing, I'd say that I felt there was more to Tommy's story that the author held back, and I would have liked that thought to be a little more fleshed out. But overall, a great book that you should put in your beach bag.
I will be recommending this to others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element for the ARC!

Thank you to Simon Element and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I was excited to get a book by Dave as I've really enjoyed the other books I have read by this author. In all honesty, I didn't even read the blurb because I know I like her writing and figured whatever it was I'd enjoy it. I was expecting a mystery perhaps with a little bit of thrill to it, but that's not really what I got. Is it a mystery, for sure. But not in the most common sense of the genre. This one is filled with a lot of family dynamics that the characters worked through and I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the story. There is a lot of heart-wrenching family drama which the characters work through.
Dave has a way of writing characters that are deep and emotional. I get sucked into them and their development. I loved watching the ones in this book morph and change a bit while still maintaining who they are. I find them very relatable and it's easy to feel their emotions through the words on the page. The characters come together through tragedy. Despite being family, they have never truly been connected. But their father's death brings them into each other's paths and they find they have more in common than they thought. It was nice watching Nora build a relationship with her brother.
The timeline alternates between present and past giving us a glimpse at the character who is no longer with us during the present chapters. Nora narrates the present chapters while the past chapters are seen through her father Liam's eyes. The past progresses towards the present as the author slowly builds the characters towards what they are in the present.
The writing is really great in this book. It grabbed me right from the starts. I was eager to turn the pages and learn what would happen in the next chapter. I would say this was definitely fast paced as I finished it in two days.
If you're looking for what Dave gave you in her book prior to this one, you're not going to get quite as much mystery. It's there, but this book really is more about the family and how they learn about each other through their pasts and their presents. This is a slow burn mystery with family drama. Dave will continue to be an auto-buy/read author for me in the future.

I enjoyed this book. I can’t say it’s a super taut thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat, but I was engaged with the story and the characters. The major twist I was able to predict pretty early on, but still landed nicely. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this for someone seeking anything fast paced, but if you are looking for an easy read this is great.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element books for the ARC.

In Laura Dave's follow-up to her highly successful The Last Thing He Told Me, she aims to serve up a "soulful suspense and evocative family drama." The story centers around Nora, whose wealthy and successful father died under mysterious circumstances. Desperate to get to the bottom of what truly happened, Nora works to uncover her father's past with the help of her brother and a small cast of characters who provide snippets of context into the man their father truly was.

While I didn't obsess over Dave's first big hit, I was sufficiently entertained enough to be excited about receiving this book as an ARC. However, I found that I enjoyed it even less. Perhaps it was the title, or the marketing, or my own expectations that Dave would be serving up another thriller ripe for your mom's next book club, but I found that this fell totally flat for me. Don't get my three-star rating wrong--the characters are well-developed and well-written, the settings are mysterious, and it seems like we are trying to pick up puzzle pieces throughout to figure out what truly happened to the narrator's father. Despite this, I found this book to not be thrilling in the slightest. In fact, I don't think Dave meant for it to be a solvable mystery at all, but rather a family drama fraught with money, conflict, and romance. While someone else may enjoy this at first read, I was preparing myself for a fast-paced thriller, which could not be further to this book's actual content. It was incredibly slow-paced and took me much longer than anticipated to finish.

That is not to say that I might not recommend this book. If someone is looking for a family drama taking place across multiple timelines with a somewhat dark ending, then this will certainly fit the bill. But if you are looking for something autumnal and spooky to keep you on the edge of your seat this fall, I would look elsewhere.

This was a great family drama. Lies, secrets, and mystery! Characters were well developed as Laura always does a good job with. This wasn’t my favorite books of hers but was still an interesting premise. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for sending me a copy. All opinions expressed are my own.