What’s better than a book club? A book club within a book club. This year with a group of fellow editors I’ve been reading Novel Study by Kristen Tate. Novel Study is an editorial Russian nested doll that contains Tate’s insights and craft lessons on ten novels. This has given me the chance to read eleven books for the motivational price of one (well, nine—it wasn’t until book three that I caught another editor’s fever to read them all). It’s also given me an opportunity to challenge some of my literary preconceptions with Tate's curious and incisive editorial assistance.
But I’ll fawn over Tate at the end of the year. Today, I want to talk about the sixth novel she analyzes: The Last Thing He Told Me, a suspense–mystery by Laura Dave.
I’ve seen plenty of suspense movies, but I think when I last read a suspense book I was a teenager. I am, shall we say, not a huge fan of genre fiction outside of select sci-fi and fantasy. Not historically.
I’m also not historically a good picker of hills to die on. Fortunately I have received many opportunities in the last two decades to reconsider (often with chagrin) which mole-mountains I wish to fortify and which I am ready to climb down from. Reading The Last Thing He Told Me provided me with a wonderfully satisfying opportunity in that regard.
Read my full review on my business blog at ultreyaeditorial.com.
