The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave

 

The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave.

Published 2nd January 2025 by Century.

From the cover of the book:

One beautiful Californian evening, a wealthy businessman falls to his death from his secluded cliff-top house onto the rocks below.

A tragic accident? Or murder?

Nora and her half-brother Sam suspect it may be the latter, and team up to uncover the truth of what really happened that night.

But their relationship has never been easy, and it is about to be tested to the limit as they start to question how well either of them really knew their elusive father.

Unravelling his mysterious past takes them back to a world they knew nothing about, to a tangled love affair and a web of relationships that other people would far rather stay buried...

Filled with passion, intrigue, lies, and dark, dark family secrets, The Night We Lost Him is a page turning mystery you won’t ever want to put down.

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When wealthy businessman, Liam Noone, falls to his death from his secluded cliff-top home in California, his demise is ruled to be accidental by the police. However, his son Sam thinks his father was not alone that night and suspects foul play. He contacts his half-sister, architect Nora, confiding his concerns and co-opts her into his quest to discover exactly what happened to their father.

Liam has always kept different parts of his life compartmentalised, including the offspring from his multiple marriages. Nora and Sam barely know each other and their relationship is not easy, which makes Nora reluctant to get involved. However, once they begin to delve into the circumstances of their father's death, secrets about his personal and professional lives begin to emerge. Nora is soon convinced that Sam might be right.

The story unravels in two compelling timelines, following on from an intriguing prologue that hints at murder. The first is from the point of view of Nora, following the course of her and Sam's quest for the truth, and the details of her own romantic dilemmas; and the second gives a glimpse into the history of their father's hidden relationship, from the moment he and his mysterious lover meet during their college days, until shortly before his death.

Pretty quickly it becomes clear that this is going to be more than your average murder-mystery, as Dave manages to combine a page-turning thriller with oodles of lovely storylines around the complicated relationships in the Noone family, and there is a lot of family baggage to be worked through alongside the nicely wrought mystery elements. It is a combination that works strikingly well, with all the little meanderings in the personal relationships adding welcome character development, and emotional texture, to the suspenseful plot. 

Dave knows how to keep you guessing, with clever misdirection throughout the story that has you looking at practically everyone with a suspicious eye. She divulges the truth ever so gradually via both timelines, dropping her reveals with perfect timing. She packs the book with delicious themes too that weave in threads of dysfunctional families, messy romantic relationships, sibling rivalry, driving ambition, expectation, loss, and enduring love that resound through every part of the book. I also really enjoyed the echoing theme of houses/design/the built environment, and what makes a home.

This book completely hooked me. Dave's writing glides engagingly across the page, and I could not rest until I had followed every single twist and turn on the way to the very satisfying ending. What a cracker!

The Night We Lost Him is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Century for sending me a proof copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Laura Dave is the global number one bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me, Eight Hundred Grapes and other novels. Her work has been published in thirty-eight countries.

The Last Thing He Told Me is soon to be a limited series for Apple TV+.

She resides in Santa Monica.