The night we lost him A novel

Review by Booklist Review

Dave follows up her blockbuster, The Last Thing He Told Me (2021), with another compelling, family-driven mystery. Nora is still grieving the sudden death of her mother when the hotel-magnate father she's kept at arm's length falls to his death from the cliffs by his California cottage. The last thing Nora expects is for her younger half-brother Sam to come to her with his belief that their father's death wasn't accidental. Nora is skeptical, but she agrees to travel with Sam from New York to California to investigate, in part to put some space between her and the fiancé she is desperately afraid of losing. Nora and Sam have never been close, thanks to their father's compartmentalization of each of the families his three marriages brought him, but as they look into the circumstances surrounding his death and uncover the truth about the great love of his life, Nora comes to realize she and Sam have much more in common with each other and with their father. Dave should have another hit on her hands with this involving tale.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Estranged half-siblings reunite to investigate the death of their father, self-made hotel magnate Liam Noone, in this soapy family saga from Dave (The Last Thing He Told Me). Brooklyn-based architect Nora is surprised, after years of fighting to maintain her independence from her father, by the depth of her grief following his fatal fall from the cliff outside his California home. Nora is further blindsided when Sam, the younger half-brother she barely knows from the second of Liam's three marriages, reaches out to share his suspicion that the tragedy was no accident. Nora and Sam--who began working at the family firm after an accident derailed his promising baseball career--start squabbling almost instantly, but stonewalling from Liam's cousin and business partner, Joe, and from the California cops whose probe of Liam's death was perfunctory at best, convince the pair there's a mystery to solve. Whether Liam was murdered is a question Dave dangles tantalizingly as the siblings press for answers from the family and friends who he kept almost compulsively compartmentalized. Unfortunately, save for Nora, the inconsistent characters often feel less considered than Dave's descriptions of decor and dining. It's a mixed bag. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Sept.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

When their father dies on the cliffs of his California estate, estranged half-siblings unite to investigate possible foul play. As Dave's seventh novel opens, the reader learns something the characters don't know: Hotel magnate Liam Noone did not fall by accident. He was pushed--by whom and for what reason are unclear. The police have deemed it an accident and closed the case, but his son, Sam, is not so sure. Though he hasn't seen his half sister, Nora, in years, he shows up at her workplace in New York to ask her to go with him to California to investigate. This part of the story is told by Nora in the first person. We get a lot of information about Nora--she has recently lost both parents, she's an authority on neuroarchitecture, she is engaged to a New York chef but has an ex in the wings--but somehow don't get much of a feel for her as a person as she and Sam race around investigating leads and having defensive, snappy conversations. A second narrative thread begins 50 years in the past and follows the development of a romance between Liam and a woman named Cory, who is not one of his three ex-wives, nor is she a woman named Cece with whom he had a mysterious connection. The novel relies on the tension created by all these missing puzzle pieces to plunge swiftly forward, but there's nothing really at stake--no strong suspects, no wrongly accused, no contested inheritance; it's all just digging up the secrets of a dead person so his children can understand him now that it's too late. Actually, nobody really understands each other in this book, and as the characters suspiciously keep each other at arm's length, the effect extends to the reader as well. Other potentially interesting topics--neuroarchitecture (designing spaces that support emotional well-being), the high-end hotel business--are similarly set up but not explored. A promising blueprint for a book that didn't quite get written. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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