The Last Thing He Told Me

Good morning, everyone. I hope you all have had a great summer reading in the great outdoors.

I have taken some time to get some reading done so that I can have breathing room to do reviews instead of being on the seat of my pants with anxiety to finish a book because ya’ll are waiting for me so patiently to write a review. Transitioning from one job to another also had a possible impact on me, it is just adjusting to the greater amount of time I now have to do things I want to do.

I finished a book called The Last Thing He Told Me and left it not satisfied. The storyline is a newly married stepmother and her teenage stepdaughter who are put under pressure to figure out the dynamic they have. The pressure is that the husband/father disappears without saying anything except the written words “Protect her” to the wife/stepmother. The book carries on as an adventure partially across the country to figure out why he disappeared and where he went. There are also other outside factors like the government breathing down their necks to turn in any information that they have regarding his whereabouts because he is also involved in a major company scandal involving millions of dollars in fraud. The last quarter of the book is where it picks up as t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted.

When I was talking with a good friend of mine last night about the book, I gave her my grievances and she had to stop me because she pointed it out that this is all just a matter of taste in terms of writing. The Last Thing He Told Me is a not so recent book, published a couple of years ago, but I had seen it being talked about quite a bit earlier this year. I do not remember how I obtained my own copy. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it for what it was: simple and relative, especially for people who are going through a similar situation of creating a relationship with someone that comes with being in a blended family. Obviously the government and secrecy are added drama and I hope no one goes through that additive. I liked that there was that turning point between Hannah and Bailey, and that you see an “afterward” sort of scene where they grew together and their relationship got stronger.

As I referenced earlier, this book demonstrates a matter of taste for me in terms of writing, and I hope I am not the only one in saying this. I found The Last Thing He Told Me to be too simple for me. Sometimes we need a book like that every now and then, but I cannot imagine reading books that are just like this all the time. I am one who needs more substance in the writing. Reading this book has shown to me how much fiction writing has changed throughout time and has split off into different subgroups, such as prose or contemporary. I did not get a lot out of reading The Last Thing He Told Mebesides that heartwarming concept of adapting a blended family as I would with, for instance, Gilgamesh, which I just finished reading and will have a review written up soon. That is my preference.

A thought that just occurred to me was how one sided the feelings and mentality were described, probably because it was written in first person. Hannah was constantly a worrier, whether it was about herself, or Bailey, or Owen, or the situation that they all ended up in. I saw that they have adapted the book into a mini series on Apple TV so I would hope that there is way more expansion on everyone else’s state of mind or place in the storyline.

This will be a one-and-done for me, but I know that there are others would enjoy this book, perhaps much more than I. If you would like to check out The Last Thing He Told Me, you will be able to find it here.

7/10