Search

Search only in certain items:

The Last Thing He Told Me
The Last Thing He Told Me
Laura Dave | 2021 | Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller
8
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
A riveting mystery about a missing man
Hannah and Owen have not been married very long before he disappears without a trace. He leaves behind a brief note stating, "Protect her." Hannah knows the note refers to Owen's sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey lost her mother as a child, and Owen is all she has. Meanwhile, the company Owen works for is caught up in a swirl of scandal, while the FBI and U.S. Marshals show up on Hannah's doorstep. The more Hannah investigates, the more she realizes that Owen must have been hiding secrets about his past. And those secrets may be putting her and Bailey in grave danger.

"Owen's note is short. One line, its own puzzle. Protect her."

This was an excellent page-turner: a wonderful character-driven mystery that sucked me in from the very beginning. It keeps you wondering and guessing from the start. Why did Owen disappear? Is he a good guy or a bad one? We discover things as Hannah does, and the book is so engrossing. She and Bailey unravel Owen's past, becoming detectives themselves, and we get snippets from the past they do.

It's fascinating trying to piece everything together. I was frantically flipping the pages, and I read this one in only a couple of settings. The language is flowery but absorbing. In addition to the key disappearance, Dave reflects on Hannah's relationships with both Owen and Bailey. If you want to get lost in a good mystery for a couple of days (or hours), I highly recommend this one.
  
40x40

ClareR (5879 KP) rated The Promise in Books

Oct 12, 2021  
The Promise
The Promise
Damon Galgut | 2021 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Promise is on the Booker Prize 2021 shortlist, and I can see why. I enjoyed this book immensely - I love the idea of being a fly on the wall of a white South Africans house during and after Apartheid, and this pretty much sold the book to me before I even started reading it. The fact that we only drop in to the lives of this family during times of death and the subsequent funerals was a really interesting angle to take. These were people under a great deal of stress due to the fact that someone in their close family had died - even though they weren’t a close family at all. There are four funerals, each completely different in style, religion (or not) and ways in which they died.

As time moves on, Apartheid ends, Nelson Mandela becomes President. But does life change that much for the Swarts? Do they uphold the promise made at the beginning of the book, as overheard by the youngest daughter when her mother was dying? Laws may change, but do people’s attitudes?

This is a disjointed family: there doesn’t seem to be a single close relationship between any of them. They all seem to be selfish people who resent the new South Africa, as they lose social standing, money, and are directly affected by the rise in crime.

It was a thoroughly engrossing book, and I lost myself in it every time I sat down to read. It’s a really good, character-driven novel. Now to wait and see if it wins!!