A review by mangosugar
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

this was a waste of time 😃

laura dave doesn’t show and doesn’t put much effort in telling, either. i find her writing style so off-putting, repetitive and childish. the amount of times she repeats the same sentence because she doesn’t know how else to emphasize it drove me up a wall. her writing is so monotonous, just “i did that,” “i felt sad,” “there was this.” i’ve read more titillating encyclopedias. 

the premise for the story is interesting, but it doesn’t go anywhere until the last 30 pages when dave info-dumps on you like a gossipy coworker and just
 stops fucking writing. she couldn’t even make up her mind on when the epilogue takes place. i imagine she just closed out the word document and sent it to the printers.

the twist or whatever, the reveal of where the titular “he” disappeared to and why he did it, is so disappointing. it has fuck-all to do with the first 200 pages and very little to do with him. you could scrap them and it wouldn’t change a thing, which is not what you want when you’re writing any type of book, much less a mystery where the clues are supposed to be hidden in plain sight from the beginning. 

the characters are so uncharismatic and impossible to root for. i kept forgetting the main character’s name because, somehow, she kept fading into the background of her own scenes. literally all we ever know about her is that she loves her dead grandpa, likes to woodwork, had absent parents and was engaged once before. we don’t even get to know why she and her ex-fiancĂ© broke up despite him playing a bigger role than the current husband this story revolves around. all we get is hannah rolling her eyes at him when he goes out of his way to help her.

bailey isn’t much better. dave’s attempt to humanize her and make her seem empathetic fall so flat, it’s almost impressive. the most dave could do was have her tear up twice and cross her arms because hmph she’s an angsty teenager >:( 

give me a break. the only thing this book has is that the twist is actually unpredictable, because it doesn’t relate to any fucking thing that comes before it, so you literally could not anticipate it. we’re just thrown into another plot at the end and we’re told it makes sense because dave literally spells out the backstory all at once in 2 pages. 

and girl, the end
 no one clapped. no one moved. in fact we all started booing.