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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.
  
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
2017 | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Dumb as fuck, sheds the vast majority of the source's intelligence - even speaking as someone with only a cursory knowledge of it - for something a lot more nonsensical, westernized, and generic. But it doesn't sacrifice even an ounce of its visual pizzazz - if we've learned anything about Rupert Sanders (non-cheating scandal related, that is) it's that he does not fuck around with his aesthetic. 110% magnetic, self-assured, and every bit as visually stupendous as π˜‰π˜­π˜’π˜₯𝘦 π˜™π˜Άπ˜―π˜―π˜¦π˜³ 2049. I found most of the ending parts to be a disingenuous swing and a miss but who cares, did you *see* the way ScarJo beat the shit out of those people to synth music while she was invisible and the water was going all slo-mo and stuff? As a piece of seductive sci-fi junk food that's nice and heavy on the portent, it's nothing less than orgasmic - though it makes sense fans of the source would detest this, this is pretty much what I expected after all so I can't say my bar was mega high to begin with. I'm in the middle with Scarlett, it isn't too demanding of a performance but the unnatural cranes and dead gawks are right up her alley and do fit quite nicely here so eh I'll take it for now even if it feels like bootleg 𝘜𝘯π˜₯𝘦𝘳 𝘡𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘬π˜ͺ𝘯. And it's always good to see Takeshi Kitano. Oh and also Juliette Binoche is at least twenty-five times better in this than every role she's ever been nominated for an Oscar for.