The Last Thing I Told You by Emily Arsenault Book Review

The Last Thing I Told You by Emily Arsenault Book Review

The lowdown from Goodreads

Publication Date July 24th, 2018

Therapist Dr. Mark Fabian is dead, bludgeoned in his office. But that doesn’t stop former patient Nadine Raines from talking to him — in her head. Why did she come back to her hometown after so many years away? Everyone here thinks she’s crazy. And she has to admit, they might have good reason to think so. She committed a shockingly violent act when she was sixteen and has never really been able to explain that dark impulse, even to Fabian. Now that Fabian’s dead, why is she still trying? 

Meanwhile, as Detective Henry Peacher investigates Fabian’s death, he discovers that shortly before he died, Fabian pulled the files of two former patients. One was of Nadine Raines, one of Henry’s former high school classmates. Henry still remembers the disturbing attack on a teacher that marked Nadine as a deeply troubled teen. More shockingly, the other file was of Johnny Streeter, who is now serving a life sentence for a mass shooting five years ago. The shooting devastated the town and everyone — including Henry who is uncomfortable with the “hero” status the tragedy afforded him — is ready to move on. But the appearance of his file brings up new questions. 

Maybe there is a decades-old connection between Nadine and Streeter. And maybe that somehow explains what Nadine is doing in Fabian’s office nearly twenty years after being his patient. Or how Fabian ended up dead two days after her return. Or why Nadine has fled town once again. But as Nadine and Henry head toward a confrontation, both will discover that the secrets of people’s hearts are rarely simple, and even in the hidden depths of a psychologist’s files, rarely as they appear.

The Last Thing I Told You by Emily Arsenault Book Review

I knew almost without any hesitation this book was going to definitely be my beach read on our vacation..so so glad I decided on this one because it was an excellent read to get lost in while listening to the waves.

In this fast-paced thriller, the reader is immediately & from the very first page, sucked right in!!  Told in alternate narratives between Nadine, and Henry, it’s like a crazy tennis match that I didn’t want to end!

THE VERDICT

I loved this book.  If you are wondering what to pick up to round out your summer reading, LOOK. NO. FURTHER!!!  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Special thanks to Emily Arsenault & William Morrow for providing our copy in exchange for an honest & fair review.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: EMILY ARSENAULT

I haven’t had a terribly interesting life, so I won’t share too many details. But the highlights include:

•    When I was a preschooler and a kindergartner, I had a lazy eye and I was Connecticut’s “Miss Prevent Blindness,” appearing on pamphlets and television urging parents to get their kids’ eyes checked. I wore an eye patch and clutched a blonde doll wearing a similar patch. I imagine it was all rather maudlin, but at the time I wouldn’t have known that word.

•    I wrote my first novel when I was in fifth grade. It was over a hundred pages and took me the whole school year to write. (It was about five girls at a summer camp. I’d never been to a summer camp, but had always wanted to attend one.) When I was all finished, I turned back to the first page, eager to read it all from the beginning. I was horrified at how bad it was.

•    At age thirteen, I got to go to a real sleepaway camp. It was nothing like the book I had written.

•    I studied philosophy in college. So did my husband. We met in a Hegel class, which is awfully romantic.

•    I worked as an editorial assistant at Merriam-Webster from 1998-2002, and got to help write definitions for their dictionaries.

•    My husband and I served in the Peace Corps together, working in rural South Africa. I miss Losasaneng, miss many of the people we met there, and dream about it often.

•    I now live in Shelburne Falls, MA, with my husband and daughter. We have an adopted stray cat named Agatha who is very mysterious: we don’t know where she came from, how old she is, or if she actually likes us.