Book Review | Book Chatter

The Last Thing He Told Me
By Laura Dave
Simon & Schuster, 9781501171345, May 2021, 320pp.

The Short of It:

I love a good page-turner that has a little bit of substance too.

The Rest of It:

I’ve enjoyed many of Reese Witherspoon’s club picks during this pandemic and The Last Thing He Told Me was no exception.

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. ~ Indiebound

The story goes back and forth between the present and the past, leading up to Owen’s disappearance. The message Owen leaves for Hannah is just cryptic enough to really confuse her. Hannah is well aware of Owen’s love for his daughter Bailey but that is what makes it all the more confusing. Why would he ever want to leave her?

After a friend contacts Hannah about what’s going on at Owen’s office and how they are being investigated, Hannah begins to worry that Owen has gotten himself in over his head. Is he a criminal? Was he forced to participate in something illegal? Does she know him at all? Bailey is equally perplexed by it all. She knows her dad and he would not go missing unless he had a very good reason to do so.

When it comes to these hyped book club reads, all you want to know is if it lives up to the hype, right? Well, I believe it does. There isn’t a whole lot of action but I like the way the story unfolded and I liked the dynamic between Hannah and Bailey, given the difficult circumstances.

Source: Won in a giveaway hosted by Hello Sunshine!
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Go Tell It On The Mountain
By James Baldwin
Vintage, 9780345806543, 2013, 272pp.

The Short of It:

A beautifully written, semi-autobiographical peek into the life of James Baldwin.

The Rest of It:

In one of the greatest American classics, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s discovery of the terms of his identity. Baldwin’s rendering of his protagonist’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. ~ Indiebound

James Baldwin had been coming up a lot in my book club’s various social media feeds and we had not really read him before, so when it came time to select a book, Go Tell It On The Mountain was chosen. From the short blurb above, you’d think that the story follows this young boy through his self-discovery process and it does, but there are other stories told along the way. Stories about his relationship with his step-father, how religion impacted him growing up, how the misfortune of others affected his family down the line. These stories are loosely woven together but not for one big epiphany at the end. I feel that the end is left for the reader to interpret as we all had different takes on where the character would go from there.

This story encouraged some thoughtful discussion so it worked well as a book club pick. I also enjoyed the writing. It had a flow to it that appealed to me as I was reading it and since it’s semi-autobiographical, I learned about Baldwin’s experience with the Pentecostal Church and how he struggled with his sexual identity. There’s a lot to consider here.

Have you read it?

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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