3.5 stars

Liam Noone has died, he is the owner of Noone Property Empire. However, it is believed by some there are mysterious circumstances behind his death. His children will ban together to determine if it is really an accident.

Nora goes down a rabbit hole of Liam’s life, finding secrets and forgotten memories. Sam her estranged stepbrother has joined her. This book is told over two timelines, spanning 50 years. There is family drama, with mystery and suspense.

This is not my favorite book by this author, but not bad. I found it riveting at times, but also slow. If you are a Laura Dave fan, I hope the book works for you.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon Element | S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books for the advanced copy; this is my voluntary review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Night We Lost Him
By: Laura Dave
Publisher: Simon Element
Pub Date: 9/17/24

I had read some mix reviews on this one before I started it. I will agree that it’s more of a family drama than a thriller but I really enjoyed it.
When Liam Noone falls to his death off a cliff at his longtime residence it leaves his children with big questions. Was he alone? Did he really fall having walked those cliffs for decades? As his daughter Nora works to untangle the mystery she learns a lot about her father that she and her brothers had no clue about.
Thanks to Laura Dave and Simon Element for this galley.

The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave, recently Nora lost her father Liam when he fell from the cliff at his favorite place in the world wind Break cottage. Her half brother Sam thinks he was murdered and pleads with Nora who he’s not close with at all to help himsolve the case or at the very least help him investigate it. She agrees and while investigating they learn secrets of their fathers life and then the end will also help them see the errors in their own. I don’t want to give spoilers away so I will be careful with what I say but I do think the author utilized the most click baitey thing you can do in a book and I’m not going to say what that is but for those who read it you will know what I’m talking about. Despite that however I still truly enjoyed the book I thought the characters were really good, I thought the relationship between Nora and Sam really turned out to be a good one and I found Sam to be quite funny many times throughout the book I thought it wasn’t going to turn out as good as it did but it did turn out really good with a great ending this is a book I definitely recommend. #NetGalley, #Simon&Schuster, #LauraDave, #TheNightWeLostHim,

GOOD mystery!!! I didn't see any of these pieces that came together - I really thought (as I'm sure I was supposed to) that CeCe and Cory were the same person.

I'm so glad that while Liam was pushed that it wasn't something more sinister, that you could understand Paul's perspective.

“If you are looking for answers you can’t find, you need to change the question.”


I really liked Laura Dave’s first book, The Last Thing He Told Me! This book didn’t quite measure up to that one, though I think I liked this book’s ending better than The Last Thing He Told Me.

This one was marketed as an ‘epic love story wrapped in a mystery.’ The question posed in this book is similar to Dave’s first book: ‘how well can you know the people you love?’ Her first book was about a husband/wife situation. The Night We Lost Him revolves around the relationship between a father and his children.

The word ‘epic’ can mean spectacular or it can refer to a long narrative centered around a ‘hero.’ This love story would more properly be categorized along the latter definition, though ‘hero’ would be quite a stretch.


The Basic Premise

Our main character is Nora, because obviously… and she is still processing the grief of losing her mother recently when her father dies as well. He fell from the edge of his cliff-side property. At least that’s the story.

When Nora’s half-brother, Sam, shows up out of the blue with theories about foul play, Nora becomes convinced that something doesn’t add up. Her father knew that property inside and out, he would never have accidentally fallen. He must have been pushed.

“Our father was going to sell his company to someone else, after a lifetime of not even considering selling it. Then, for reasons unknown, he walked it all the way back and decided to leave the company to his sons. And, eight days after that, he made two phone calls to an old lover and then fell off a cliff that he knew like the back of his hand.”

The more Nora and Sam dig into the life of their father, the more they realize they didn’t know about him.

At the core of this story is the variety of families/lives their father lived. He had married and divorced three women and had children with two of them.

“He certainly kept the compartments separate when he was alive. He certainly fought to keep all sorts of things private. What if there was a reason for that? Beyond what we know?”

“Maybe he thought that if we all left our respective corners, we would have started talking. And it would have revealed something he wasn’t ready to look at— or something that he didn’t want his children to look at. The version of himself he needed to keep private.”

In addition to the mystery surrounding their father’s death, Nora’s grief has started to drive a wedge between her and her fiance, Jack. A previous boyfriend, Elliot, who knew her dad well re-enters the picture and we are left to wonder if her and Jack can weather this or if Elliot is her new refuge.

“‘I really don’t want you to go.’”— “‘That’s not the same thing as wanting me to stay.’”


Comments

This book goes back and forth between Nora’s POV and events from decades past between her father (Liam) and a woman named Cory. This relationship between him and Cory is the ‘epic’ romance.

In college Liam is immediately infatuated with Cory but Cory keeps him at a distance because she doesn’t not consider him ready to be in the kind of committed (?) marriage she wants. So instead they are basically friends with benefits. Because that’s definitely the safer route. Over the years the relationship shifts, but Cory ends up married to another man.

Liam never stops asking Cory to be with him.

Nora and Sam discover that there may have been another woman for their father this entire time, even while he was married to each of their mothers.

This whole romance thing is just not my style. It reminds me a little bit of The Last Letter from Your Lover. We’re supposed to root for this romance? When Liam has made very real decisions to have these various families and then leave them.

Oh sure, he’s still part of their lives:

“We had our Friday nights together— and if I had a school play, or an art show, he rarely missed it. But he spent much of the rest of the time in the other families and worlds he occupied. Worlds he also needed to tend to, worlds that I knew almost nothing about.”

This book made it seem like we were supposed to be sympathetic to Liam. He was a man in love, after all, and he would do ANYTHING for his kids. Except, apparently, stick around and be their dad and a husband to their mother. I really don’t care about that kind of romance. To me, Liam was a cowardly man who chased his every desire, living selfishly in a fantasy he could never let go of at the expense of his wives and children.

You would think discovering all of this would anger Nora and Sam. And it did a little, but by the end it was like they were drawn into this ‘love story’ and just cared about their father’s happiness. Bleh. If everyone just did whatever ‘made them happy’ our world would be even more messed up than it already is.

“He would do anything that was needed to get himself there: to a completely different life.”

I could handle a long-forgotten-unrealized-love-from-the-past kind of trope, but Liam and Cory’s was very much not long-forgotten and very much realized… just dysfunctionally.

They say that love trumps loyalty, “But what a thing, what a rare and precious thing if you have both.”

What is love without loyalty?

Loyalty is defined by words like trust, devotion, true, fidelity, honesty, reliability. You’re telling me love trumps those things? There is something in love that does NOT include those things?

Pretty sure that’s not love. That’s lust. And should be frowned upon in most societies.

We’re supposed to view fidelity, honesty, devotion, and truth as ‘rare’ and ‘precious’?

When love functions with loyalty as it SHOULD… think of all the families that stay together. Think of all the daughters and sons who have a mother and father to offer them stability, reliability, and unconditional love. When forbidden love stops being the goal, the destruction is abated. What a thing.

You know, maybe it is rare. But it shouldn’t be.


What kept this book from being worse is part of the ending. This is going to be a little spoiler (not related to the mystery) so scroll down to the next section if you don’t want to know.


[

When we discover that Elliot has been back in Nora’s life I was like— Shoot. I thought we were actually going to have a book with a strong relationship that weathers hard things, but it seemed like Laura was gearing us up for Nora realizing Jack was a really good fiance and everything she needed, but she was going to choose what she ‘wanted’ instead. A man from her past who made her feel close to her father, who made her feel a certain way.

If she had ended up with Elliot this book would be just a complete, do not read. THANKFULLY, Laura had Nora realize what she’s had this whole time that she was pushing away in her own grief. Turns out two people can actually be committed to each other and one of them can actually resist temptation.

That was a saving grace to this book. It paints a stark contrast between Nora and Liam which was definitely needed in this book.

Another thing that felt like a missed plot point was the fact that as Nora and Sam were digging around, they were realizing that it was suspicious for the police not to even consider that someone pushed Liam off the cliff. They were wrapping it up as if they were hiding something or being pressured to cover this up.

In the end we discover that couldn’t have been the case. So then why were the police acting that way? It’s a red herring that then doesn’t make any sense. (hide spoiler)]




Recommendation

This isn’t a must-read for me. If it weren’t for one saving grace, it would be a must-not read. But because of the one thing and that it wasn’t too bad reading it, I would say this fits more in the ‘maybe’ category of recommendations.

Some will probably like it, some probably won’t.

This is a ‘read at your own risk’ kind of book. And if you do read it, please don’t fall for the lie that loyalty and love are mutually exclusive things.


[Content Advisory: 18 f-words, 7 s-words, infidelity referenced but not shown]

**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

The Night We Lost Him is a suspenseful read that is filled with family drama. I enjoyed Dave’s first book and eagerly looked forward to reading this book. It is a quick, enjoyable read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“My father‘s pride in me, in all of us, was immovable, even when we weren’t in the room to witness it.”

This one was marketed as a “new kind of thriller” but I personally didn’t find it thrilling at all. It was more mystery with lots of skeletons in the family closets…lots of family and lots of secrets. I liked it but it just wasn’t what I was expecting when I picked it up to tread a thriller. That’s not to say it wasn’t good, it was a good family drama mystery but was 100% NOT a thriller.

The question that becomes the focal point of the book is did Liam Noone died of his own accord or did someone take his life from him?

Liam Noone is a father to several children and an ex to many. There is no doubt that he loves all of the people in his orbit but he does a pretty good job of keeping his children from different marriages very separate to the point that they have no real relationship with one another at all. Liam compartmentalized every aspect of his life and he lived for his business. Despite his failings as a husband, everyone still remains close to him and they love him anyway.

Why did Liam Noone become so different right before his death? Why did he act out of character?

If you like mysteries with blended families and lots of secrets you will probably enjoy this one.

This was a bit of a disappointment for me. I was expecting a balance of family drama, mystery, and suspense. Instead the plot was slow, the family drama was flat, and the timeline changes were abrupt. This was definitely very light on mystery and suspense and even the twists were delivered with nonchalance. I never felt invested in the characters, the family drama, or the mystery. Overall, I was expecting more based on this author's last amazing family mystery.

Laura Dave has done it again! Wow, this book was excellent and so well written! Such amazing characters with depth, intrigue and plenty of drama as the chapters unfold..Talk about a roller coaster of emotions... So twisty and suspenseful, I was so invested and couldn't put it down. Kept me guessing right until the end. This book was everything I could have asked for.

This was such a well written novel. I loved the characters and the flashback to present day and 30 years ago. Such a good twist at the ending.

I read Laura Dave's last novel, The Last Thing He Told Me, a few years ago. While I thought it was well written, I was not particularly impressed with the plot and failed to see why that novel in particular had gained so much popularity. I decided to read The Night We Lost Him to see if I would feel the same way about Dave's other books, and unfortunately I did. Well written, but too meandering and low impact to be memorable.

Just okay.

Two siblings are investigating the unexpected death of their father. Nora and Sam are not close to begin with, so Nora is quite surprised with Sam shows up randomly one day wanting to pursue the exploration of what happened to their father Liam. They head to the place he died and that's when their journey really starts not just on the death of their father but his past as a whole.

The alternating timelines are frustrating to me. The transitions were rough giving you the "whiplash" feel form one timeline to the other.
The Dual perspectives and alternating timelines were not a favorite of mine. Much of Liams narrations/chapters felt unfinished and just lacked depth all together.
Very slow paced, uneventful plot and over all the characters were dull.
I had high hopes for this one and really didn't like it at all unfortunately.

Laura Dave is truly a master at deeply emotional family stories with mystery and intrigue pulling the plot along, and The Night We Lost Him is no exception! I was so connected to the characters as they tried to figure out what happened to Liam the night he fell over the cliff. Fans of twisty mysteries that are driven by well-fleshed-out characters ill adore this one!

I was a fan of THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME and excited to read this book. Sadly, it fell flat for me.

Initially, I was invested in the plot, but as the story progressed, I felt like nothing was happening. The family dynamic was weird and there were zero likable characters. That's not a huge problem for me, but in this case, it ruined my reading experience.

It's not much of a thriller, but discovering the life of a parent after they are gone. There's a bit of mystery and intrigue, but it does not read like a thriller to me.

Liam owns a huge hotel conglomeration, has three ex wives and keeps everyone separated. So, when he falls to his death outside his cliff side home, everyone assumes it was accidental. But, it doesn’t take Sam and Nora long to figure out this may have been murder.

As with all Laura Dave books, this is a slow burn! And Lord have mercy, I had a lot of suspects!

Nora is a bit of a conundrum. She is driven in her work but she pushes everyone who loves her away. She is not close to any of her siblings so, when her brother Sam drops into her life with a question about their father’s death, Nora is extremely reluctant. But she soon grasps the challenge and she never lets go!

This story unfolds in a unique way and the characters and situations just keep you so intrigued.

Need an all around good murder mystery….THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

The Night We Lost Him is a family drama/mystery about two siblings investigating the death of their father.

This was a fast read even though the plot was a little slow. I read Laura Dave’s previous novel and thought it was an ok read and I liked this one better. The twist at the end I did not see coming!

I really enjoyed this book! I loved how the complicated family dynamics played such a role in keep the story suspenseful and engaging. As the reader you felt that everyone was an unreliable narrator even though they shared the common goal of figuring out what happened to their father. I found myself staying up to keep reading and I love when a book pulls me in like that.

If you enjoyed the mystery of The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, then you'll also enjoy her newest book, The Night We Lost Him.

When Mallory's father dies via cliff fall at his beloved home, she assumes (as does law enforcement) that it was an accident. Her father slipped and fell. But her half-brother Sam does not agree. He thinks their father was pushed.

Thus, the two siblings, who don't really spend much time together, end up traveling to California together to find the truth, not only about what really happened that night, but also about who their father really was.

Can you ever really know a person, especially if that person does everything in his power to keep certain parts of his life and the people in it private?

I'm sure this will spark some good book club discussion as everyone tries to guess the who, what, and why of the situation. Is there more to it than the police are letting on? Or are Sam and Mallory on a wild goose chase fueled by grief?

The Night We Lost Him is published by Marysue Ricci Books and will be available to purchase on September 17, 2024. I received a free review copy.

Go into this one for the complicated family story with a touch of mystery. Main character Nora is absolutely excellent, and I only wish a little more about her career was included. Getting to know her father through a series of flashbacks about his life added a layer of intrigue as his past is revealed, and how it connected to the version of him his children knew. A nice sense of atmosphere in both the NYC settings and the coastal California ones.

Another great read by Laura Dave. Fantastic characters that kept me flipping pages long into the night. Packed with secrets, lies and family ties. It was impossible to know who to trust.
Thank you NetGalley, Laura Dave and Simon Element for the opportunity to read and review this book.