The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave

It’s rare that I love a sequel as much as the first book, but The First Time I Saw Him checked every box and fed my soul. 

Favourite Quote:

 My skin starts burning, my cheeks flaring red. But I don’t say anything. There’s no time to say anything. He shrugs and shifts his backpack higher on his shoulder. Then he disappears in Theo the crows. And that’s that. He is just another design junkie, on his way to another booth.

I don’t dare watch him go. I don’t dare look in his direction. 

Book Synopsis:

Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California. Together, they’ve forged a relationship with Bailey’s grandfather Nicholas and are putting the past behind them.

But when Owen shows up at Hannah’s new exhibition, she knows that she and Bailey are in danger again.

Hannah and Bailey are forced to go on the run in a relentless race to keep their past from catching up with them. As a thrilling drama unfolds, Hannah risks everything to get Bailey to safety—and finds there just might be a way back to Owen and their long-awaited second chance.

A gripping, rich, and deeply moving novel about the power of forgiveness, The First Time I Saw Him picks up right where the epilogue for the “genuinely moving” (The New York Times) The Last Thing He Told Me left off, giving listeners the eagerly awaited and absolutely exhilarating sequel to Dave’s global blockbuster.

Review:

We meet Hannah and Bailey again, five years in the future from where we left them in The Last Thing He Told Me, and I was hooked from the first chapter. Laura Dave has written a tight and emotional thriller that scratched an itch I didn’t even know I had.​

It’s lovely to see how Bailey matured from the petulant teen she was and how Hannah has managed being a single mom. Both she and Bailey know that Owen, Hannah’s husband and Bailey’s dad, is still out there somewhere. And then, Hannah sees him again. That one interaction sets off a high-paced race for Hannah and Bailey to try to track down Owen and to try to discover why the mob that had promised to keep away from them now wants them dead. And then we discover that Bailey’s grandfather, the shadowy Nicholas, has died. Throughout the book, we are taken from the present day and from Hannah and Owen’s point of view to 40 years in the past, and we discover how Nicholas became the man he was, what drove him, and what broke him.

Hannah was one of my favourite characters ever in The Last Thing He Told Me, and she hasn’t lost any of her wit, intelligence and heart in this book. Bailey is a gorgeous young woman who’s looking to build a stable life for herself. The relationship between stepmother and daughter is an indicator of the hard work the two of them have done since Owen’s disappearance.​

Everything about this book was perfect to me: the plotting, the weaving between past and present, the character arc. I liked seeing how Nicholas became the man he is today, a man with a dark past who has become beloved to both Bailey and Hannah. We also get a deep dive into Owen’s psyche and his intense yearning for the loves of his life. He is the perfect example of “if he wanted to, he would.” Owen never stopped loving Hannah and Bailey and has worked for five years to get back to them. I teared up at parts, and I pumped my fist at parts. The story is expertly plotted, and the pacing kept me sucked in. Beware – once you start, you can’t stop. I read this book in one feverdream of a sitting, with my cat hitting my leg and trying to steal my glasses off of my face to get my attention. It didn’t work – Laura’s world was far too interesting.​

The First Time I Saw Him may be the perfect sequel, and should be on your to-read list for 2026.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.