Book Review: The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave

When Nora’s estranged half-brother Sam tells her he thinks their dad’s recent accidental death may actually have been a murder, she is sceptical. After they dig into the nitty gritty of their father’s professional and personal lives however, and find there was much more going on with the famous hotel magnate than either of them knew, she begins to wonder if maybe he’s not so crazy after all…

Laura Dave’s previous book, The Last Thing He Told Me, was developed into a glossy Apple TV Plus show in 2023. That, in essence, encapsulates the problem with The Night We Lost Him.

It feels, the whole way through, as if the novel is just a treatment for her next miniseries deal (in fact, this one has already been commissioned by Netflix). Throughout, every location is described at abundant, unnecessary length, clearly with the eventual screen destination forefront in her mind – it’s as if she’s describing it more to a production designer than a general audience. Each location is fancier and more TV-worthy than the next; even those that have only the most glancing import to the plot have their various covetable features extolled in almost lascivious detail. It gets exhausting.

Now, the fact that Nora is an architect does at least provide some narrative cover for these excesses. Perhaps if, you know, the people in the story received such attention, then maybe they wouldn’t have been so egregious. But the human component of The Night We Lost Him remains far more of a pencil sketch. They are ‘types’, and nothing more – all of them glamorous and bounteously monied, of course, yet none of them real. No texture, just gloss. There’s no one for us to identify with, or invest in.

The intangibility of these characters becomes more troublesome as the narrative progresses. The plot just follows Nora and Sam speaking, usually only once, to every potential suspect, then moving on to another one. The universal blandness of said suspects makes them difficult to distinguish from each other. There’s never any sense that whoever the murderer was wishes our duo any harm. That lack of stakes, the lack of threat, kills any kind of momentum. And the wraparound story – about their father’s secret romance with a mystery woman who was the true love of his life, more than the mothers of Nora and Sam – doesn’t add anything to the equation either.

All that being said, it could have been worse. Despite the deluge of description, the book’s short chapters mean it isn’t a chore to get through. Once in a while, Nora’s ruminations on her experience of grief add an emotional depth that is sorely needed. The dialogue at least sounds natural, too – you can imagine that the right pair of actors might be able to make something of the complex relationship between the half-siblings.

The Night We Lost Him is not a disastrous novel, but neither is it an interesting one. Perhaps the TV show will leave more of an impression.

The Night We Lost Him is published by Century on 2 January 2025