A slow-paced novel that didn't fully grip me.
The Night We Lost Him is a well-written novel about family drama and sibling dynamics, rather than a gripping crime thriller. I enjoyed reading it and liked the storyline, but I didn't connect to the characters and wasn't particularly invested in the story. It definitely has potential but a bit too slow paced for me! I was expecting a thrilling page-turner based on reviews of other stories by Laura Dave, but I wasn't blown away!

Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me. I don’t want to leave a bad review because it wasn’t a badly written book but it’s more of a family drama.
It goes back and forth two timelines basically trying to work out who killed the siblings father.

Possibly a great read for some but I like a lot of suspense, plot twists and often a bit of gore.

Thank you Net Galley & Laura Dave for an advanced copy.

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review. From the blurb I was expecting a murder mystery type thing but it ended up being a family drama and I became really disinterested.

I did finish the book just because I wanted to see if the main character, Nora, ended up being a cheat or faithful. Thankfully she remained faithful as if she hadn’t I would have thrown my Kindle across the room.

The characters are okay, I actually preferred the bits where we went back in time to Liam and Cody’s relationship instead of the modern stuff with Nora and Sam. I just didn’t like the siblings, they didn’t get on and it was grating how their attitudes got in the way of the mystery.

The ending wasn’t even that much of a shock.

I didn’t work out what happened but it just felt lacklustre after all of the drama surrounding them.

I’m not sure if it’s a 2.5 or a 3 as I did finish it but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. It was alright.

I’m glad I read it.
I just wasn’t keen on the story in the end.

A family need to get to grips with the sudden death of their father. All is not as it seems and they find secrets he has hidden from them

Thank you for allowing me to review this book. It is a family mystery that is set over two timelines. Nora and her half brother set out to discover what really happened the night their dad died. Was it an accidental fall as the police report stated or was someone else involved? As Nora reluctantly agrees to join Sam in a visit to Windbreak, their father's 'holiday' home, she becomes drawn in to finding the answer to that question. Meanwhile, we are slowly learning more about their father Liam as he tells his story beginning 50 years earlier. The characters are interesting and the twists and turns along the way kept me involved to the end.
A good read.

The first Laura Dave book I have read. Did he fall or was he pushed that is the question explored in this book. For me it bounced backwards and forwards without enough content to gain a 5* review. Enjoyable and well written. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to ARC this book.

This book is about two siblings trying to uncover what actually happened the night their father died.
It alternates between past and present. An enjoyable read just a little slow in places

SPOILER FREE REVIEW!
Another Laura Dave book I thoroughly enjoyed! The Night we Lost Him is a tale of family, family and more family. Telling the story of one man and his three families. Starting on the night they lost him and also from the beginning!
This is an easy, enjoyable and fast paced read, you will want to keep turning those pages! The main characters are step brother and sister and it’s interesting to see their relationship change through the story.
Well worth a read, I’d definitely recommend this book!

It's difficult to review this story. It's full of characters I don't care about and once again it's about people with loads of money available to seek out what happened to a parent.
I find the descriptions of heart-breaking and suspenseful inaccurate and before the ending the "final twist" is obvious.

The Night We Lost Him is a family mystery slash drama read for me, it is said to b a thriller but I disagree with that.
Nora has teamed up with her half brother, Sam, to look into their father’s death. Their father is a self made property tycoon who has been married three times and has three children. He managed to be involved in everyone’s lives but kept his business very much separate. The police say it was an accident that their father fell from the cliffs by his property but Sam and Nora believe he was pushed.
The book follows the pair trying to piece their father’s life together to get a better understanding of his life. The book is told from Nora’s POV and bounces between that and years back describing the relationship between her father and Simeon called Cory. As they uncover their father’s secrets there are many wrong turns which does at times seem unnecessary in this book. Overall this was a decent read but I wouldn’t say it was a thriller and a lot more love story than I thought it was going to be.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

Part-mystery, party-drama about Nora and Sam investigating the questionable death of their father who falls from his balcony one night. Although they are not particularly close, as they were raised by their father but with different mothers, they work together to see through the secrets, lies and mysteries at the core of their family.

I really enjoyed the focus on the family dynamics as well as the mystery, particularly the development of a stronger sibling relationship between the two. As their bond gets stronger, they get closer and closer to solving their father’s death. Also, it was really interesting to learn about Nora’s architectural philosophy - sounds better than a lot of the new buildings that are made today.

The story flows at a medium pace and is told from the perspective of Nora with interwoven flashback chapters focussing on their father from childhood to the present. The flashbacks added to the mystery as you had no idea who Cory is and how she fits into it all.

Overall, I found it to be an enjoyable, if not predictable, book which is made more enjoyable by the family drama and the exploration of the siblings relationship.

This book was such an incredible experience! Every part of it felt so vivid—the settings, the characters, the emotions—it was all brought to life so beautifully. While Scotland and Scotland Island stood out as particularly atmospheric, the entire book had this immersive quality that kept me completely hooked.

What really amazed me was the way the story unfolded. My buddy readers and I had so many ideas about where things were going, but there was one major twist that none of us saw coming. It completely changed how I looked at everything and made the experience even more memorable.

The ending wasn’t what I was hoping for, but honestly, it didn’t take away from how much I loved the journey. This book was bold, different, and full of surprises, leaving me with so much to think about. I’m really glad I had the chance to read it—it’s a story that will stay with me for a long time.

I'm left unsure about this one. While I was intrigued throughout. I also felt like it was missing something to fully grip me. I had questions and theories throughout. Most if not all were answered by the end.
The pacing was good. I didn't find myself struggling to get through this. But overall it didn't wow me. But it was a good book.

Mystery thriller with an element of romance. A slow paced family death unites two siblings to uncover the truth together.

I have previously read Dave's work and really enjoyed it, so I had high hopes with this read. I liked the premise and was intrigued from the word go, however, I found the pace to be extremely slower than I'd usually like and this made it really hard to fully immerse myself into the narrative. I found the time jumps slightly challenging to follow at times, but they provided good backstory to the narrative and helped to connect the dots towards the end.

I really, really liked Dave's writing style throughout - she writes extremely poetically and it definitely is a well-written novel, it just didn't sit with me as well as I'd hoped.

This book is a great read which had me hooked from start to finish. The story is a good mystery thriller along with a romance element too. Great characters within a brilliant storyline.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

This author continues to delight with a story full of twists and turns. The characters are well written, and the story is well formed and keeps you gripped throughout.

The Night We Lost Him Laura Dave

5 stars

A mixture of thriller and romance

I found this book very interesting to read. It is a potential murder wrapped up in a love story and I have never read a book which encompasses the love story of Liam and Cory in such a way.

Liam is a successful businessman who fell from a cliff at his beloved home, Windbreak, and died instantly. He had owned Windbreak for forty years and was totally familiar with the land so his children, Nora and Tom, cannot believe that this was an accident.

Nora is the child of Liam's first wife and Tom, together with his twin brother, Sam, the children of Liam's second wife. Liam had always tried to keep his families separate so when Tom and Nora start to investigate what really happened they are also exploring their own relationship as well as their personal relationships with their respective partners,

When they discover that Liam had fallen in love whilst still at college with Cory and had remained so for fifty years despite the two of them never marrying, Nora and Tom realise that they knew very little about their father.

The investigation is told by Nora but with flashbacks to the romance between Liam and Cory. The actual truth of Liam's death was unexpected and with quite a twist but I really enjoyed how both Nora and Tom by exploring their father's enduring relationship are able to take stock of their own personal stories.

I read this book in a couple of days and really enjoyed the intermingling of a potential murder and a love affair that transcended everything else in Liam and Cory's lives. I will look out for any further books by this author, I enjoyed her writing and the plot.

Karen Deborah
Reviewer for Net galley

It's a story of a long-standing secret love story wrapped up in a mystery.
Liam Noone has let a long successful life that he has kept very compartmentalised. He has children from all three of his ex marriages, and while he he keeps in close contact with the ex wives and his offspring, he manages to keep them, his business life separate, as well as another secret life.
When he dies, two of the step siblings are suspicious about some aspects of his death, was it an accidental fall, suicide or something worse. They are hampered at every turn and find it very difficult to unravel the mystery. They are also both in the midst of working through issues with their respective partners that add to the pressure they find themselves under.
Whilst this is not my usual type of book, I have enjoyed it very much, with its sharp writing style, comp,ex compelling characters, and a great storyline.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

I can see this book being extremely controversial- you'll either really love it or really dislike it. For me, it landed in the middle-not horrible, but not exactly the page-turner thriller I was promised. It definitely didn't fall in the thriller genre for me - it was more family drama with a minor mystery. Some have even described it as a love story - it definitely NOT that

The story starts off extremely slow making it extremely hard to pick the book up and continue on. I did skim read/ skip a few pages and it made no difference to the story I had no missed anything at all. Nora, the main character, didn't really vibe for me, which was a disappointment since she was featured heavily throughout the book and cracked the murder case in the end!

Given the author and her popularity I feel it's just one of them books you have to try! I can see many loving it but for me it just missed some key parts.