The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
Published 2021 · 75,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Mystery & Crime, Thriller & Suspense
How hard is The Last Thing He Told Me to read?
The Last Thing He Told Me scores 20 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 20 out of 100
- Accessible vocabulary. Tech industry and domestic register.
- Sentence structure: 20 out of 100
- Abstraction: 15 out of 100
- Concrete mystery plot.
- Information density: 28 out of 100
- Plot-driven with reveals at regular intervals.
- Narrative indirection: 22 out of 100
- Owen's identity concealed. Information released through investigation.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The note as totem. Names as identity.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Earnest emotional register.
- Resolution withholding: 30 out of 100
- Owen's true identity and reasons withheld until the end.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Linear investigation narrative. Single POV.
How The Last Thing He Told Me is regarded
The Last Thing He Told Me holds a literary regard score of 22 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.