The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave – Episode 14

The Buddies rant and rave their way through the most recent episode on Laura Dave’s, ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’.  The buddies go full scorched earth, taking on piggy banks, bad parenting, and Reese Witherspoon and everything in-between. We suggest avoiding this episode if you were a big fan of the book.

Next Book: AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by AGATHA CHRISTIE

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All right. Welcome to the Buddy Book Club. Thanks for joining the club. I’m Dylan here with my buddy Keith to break down some best sellers this week, we’re continuing our summer Beach Read series with actually a brand new bestseller by Laura Dave. The Boat Lucky is the last thing he told me, and this was released, I think like, May, right, Keith? Yeah, pretty recently, right? It’s currently by recording Today. It’s August 3. So, yeah, this is like three months old. This will be the most recent book from publication to pot that we will probably ever do, but it came with a lot of accolades. It isn’t indeed a New York Times bestseller. It’s on the Reese Witherspoon Book Club list, which we are avid fans of. And if you’d like to reach out to us regarding this book or any of our past or future episodes, you can visit our website buddybookclub. Com or sign into our DMs on Twitter or Instagram Buddy Book Club Podcast. You can listen to us on itunes and Spotify, so please download and subscribe. And it seems like people have been downloading, which I am completely ecstatic and humbled by. So thank you. I appreciate you guys listening. We hope you enjoy the show. And if you want to expose yourself as a listener, please reach out. We’d love to hear from you. First of all, can we talk about humbled? I have a big gripe with the term humbled meaning honored. Humbled is not honored. Humbled is the opposite. Honored. Unless you’re saying you’re embarrassed because we should have bigger numbers. I understand humbled. No, I’m humbled the fact that one person would listen. You know what I mean, but that’s honored. I’m not honored. I’m humbled by the fact that someone would want to hear us talk about, but you can’t have a word that means the exact opposite of the word. It doesn’t make sense. I’m already getting answered. This is going to be the theme of the Pod today. Okay, well, can we clear this up first? Think so. Humbled means basically embarrassed, right? Why don’t you Google it? Why don’t you Google it and give us the exact the opposite of that? It would be honored, right? Humble doesn’t mean embarrassed. Synonym for humbled. Embarrassed and humbled isn’t the same thing. Humbled definition lower someone in dignity or importance. So that’s embarrassed. That’s exactly what it is. Humiliate a base demean, but little lower degree. That’s actually worse than embarrassed. All right, so we can give her the book. But I just need to clear that up. I know you want to hear it. You’re right, because you can Mans find that to me as much as you want. But you’re right. So let’s get to the last thing you told me. Okay. I figure this is pretty much this book. We’re going to go through a quick summary first. This book is pretty much National Treasure meets the movie Stepmom with Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts. Except instead of Knights Templar artifacts and founding father heirlooms, they’re looking for a pub in Texas. So it all focuses around eventually finding a bar, which is the point of this whole thing. I guess it’s two characters, Hannah and Bailey, basically going after trying to find Bailey’s dad, Hannah’s husband, Owen, who has done kind of an Enron scandal type thing and disappeared. But he doesn’t disappear because the Enron scandal thing, he disappeared because of past transactions in his life, I guess between him and his father in law, and that’s pretty much the story. There’s nothing else. Would you agree or disagree? Yeah, that’s on point. So we like to start off with a libation before the pod, and this time we’re really going to need it. Usually it’s based on something referenced in the novel itself. Last book, Ender’s game. We kind of had a blank because they’re kids, they don’t booze up, although in the body, they did. But here we are. There’s tons of references, different cocktails in this book and different liquors. But I feel like this podcast. I’m the guy who walks into the bar right before closing, and the bartender is like, wiping down the counter. He’s like, sorry we’re closed, but then he looks at you and he sees you’re dejected tie half on, just head down. Maybe it’s raining out and you’re just covered and you’re like, oh, no problem. And you start to walk out. He’s like, hey, buddy, come on in and you sit down, kind of fall into the bar stool and it’s like, what can I get you? And you say, what’s the strongest thing you got? So that’s what I’m going for in this pot. If I had some 151, I’d be drinking it right now out of the bottle because, good God, I need some catharsis here. Unfortunately, I’m not that much of a degenerate. I’m going back to the stable. You’re having a nice little truly correct. Yes, that’s right. Here we go. So everyone else grab whatever you got. But I will tell you, if you’re a huge fan of this book, you should probably turn this off right now just because I don’t think this is going to go the way you want it. This is probably going to be more of a thrill ride than what was presented to us by Laura Dave. I like it. You’re like, I don’t feel like shitting on the book. And then literally within the first you’re humbling the book. Be fair. You are humbling the book. Well, I just wanted to make sure that people weren’t, like, sitting there getting excited about this is my favorite book. And also if those people exist out there, shame on you. Shame. I’m not going to go that far. So let’s start off with favorite scene. Keith, what do you like most about this book? The woodworking stuff. I thought this one is hard to grasp. The woodworking stuff. I just liked her I thought it was an original job for someone to have. I thought it was really interesting her relationship with her grandfather. I thought that was a nice thing. I also did really love the double and Tandra stuff that was going on. There was clearly a lot of double on tundra. I did not pick up on that at the end of the book. For whatever reason, they add that scene in with her talking about woodworking, which this point, the book is over and they add the scene and she says it all starts with a good piece of wood. I play with a lot of different wood. This is all like in this quote, good wood is always defined by one thing. That’s what my grandfather told me. It’s funny. Maybe it was from you listening to the book and me reading it, but I did not pick up on that whatsoever. Did she do it in that sultry tone you just gave too? I actually had to speed it up because she kind of is a very slow. How long was the audiobook? 9 hours. You probably read it much quicker than that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I read this book, I think in two sittings. So my favorite scene, I think, was pretty much right at the beginning when Owen disappears and she gets the letter, which is like, I think the first two pages or something protect her. That was when I was like, okay, this book might be something because I had only read 100 words, and then the next 10,000 30,000 were fucking trash. But it just was like, it was an interesting premise and like, okay, I get it. This chick is the stepmom here. There’s Bailey, the daughter. They obviously don’t have a great relationship and something they’re going to have to work together for something. This is going to be interesting. So it had an opportunity is what I’m saying. And there was a point where I was like, okay, cool. This is going to be fun. Unfortunately, didn’t pan out that way. And also like her, who is her? And they did do a good job. Or, Lord, they did do a good job at the beginning to be like, Wait, when he met her, did he mean Bailey or did he mean my friend who might know information about this? So it left some level of suspense right there, but just like a match in the wind. Nice. I like that this didn’t actually happen. But the last scene, I don’t know if you got this aspect too, but the last scene, it’s this really drawn out scene on the airplane. It’s like them taxing and then, like, them kind of start to speed up. And ultimately the reason that they’re, like, slow playing this with last name for some reason is just like the fact that Bailey rests her head on Hannah’s shoulder and I was like, Wait, that’s it. I thought there was something that happened. I really, really wanted the plane just to blow up. And Nicholas bombed the plane, and I was like, Holy shit. They got blown playing up, and they’re like, I was going to like the book. If that happened, that actually would have been a great ending. They’re like, don’t trust Nicholas, and the plane blows up too dark. No, not dark enough. Not good enough. So that was your favorite scene because of the anticipation. It is funny because so little happens in this book that at the end, I was really waiting for kind of a crazy thing to happen. You know, one of those things you never expect in a movie or a book that’s like, oh, what was watching the other day? Oh, layer cake. Have you seen layer Cake? Daniel Craig movie spoiler alert. So turn it off here if you haven’t seen a great movie, by the way or good movie, but Daniel Craig is on top of the world and then gets just shot at the end. Oh, Holy smoke. I didn’t see that coming or that I care a lot movie on Netflix. Also pretty good, but similar stuff, like, just one of those things at the end. It’s like, oh, okay. I appreciate that. This author, screenwriter, whatever, just kind of went for it. I did think there was that potential, but unfortunately not. So here we are. I appreciate that favorite scene now. Thank you. I wish they had written that in Michael Bay just to do the last scene

Participant #1:

down. A lot of stocks to buy. Some are falling, some are rising. But what do you have for stock up, stock up? I had piggy banks. Apparently this is a good place to keep your wealth. Did not realize that instead of the old conventional way of going to a lawyer, the best way to do it is to hide it into some toy that your daughter once had that you would never have told anyone about had the person had Hannah not walked down and saw him with at the bar, because otherwise there’d be literally zero reason for that piggy bank to be looked in, right? They’d never be looked in. Other than the fact that she walked out and saw him with it. That’s the only reason she wasn’t supposed to see him. Piggyback. I didn’t even have this as an unanswerable question, but it is now. Did Bailey never use this piggy bank? A piggy bank? You take it even like I’d go to a friend’s house. I had a piggy bank when we were little kids. I never had one. So I thought they were interesting. You shake it and you hear change in there. But this piggy bank has a steel safe in it, so it’s like a it’s very heavy. And then B if you try to put a quarter and it only goes halfway in, it’s like, this piggy bank sucks. That’s why the piggy bank sucks up. Kim. It’s a great piggy bank. Didn’t even know Bailey never tried to use her own piggy bank because there was a saving it. Well, she’s, like, 16 now. I assume she’s not using it. Which is why, obviously it doesn’t make sense to anyone even open it. Yeah. Okay. I could dig it stuck up. Well, kind of to your favorite scene stuff. Wood turning. The idea of not only that someone’s profession is a wood Turner, which is awesome, by the way, but the idea that woodturning has 10 million videos on YouTube. I went down a wood turning black hole on YouTube and enjoyed every minute of it. It’s just really enjoyable to watch someone with a lathe cutting down, like a raw piece of wood into a bowl or into a table. Whatever the case is, it was super therapeutic. And especially after reading this book, I was like, wow, this is exactly what I need. So deep dive on that YouTube stuff. I always wanted to get a leave and go through that thing. It seemed pretty cool. You just get a chisel, you let that thing spin, you turn some stuff out of it. Awesome. So, Hannah, good for you on that profession. And props to your grandfather for teaching you because we’re turning stock up. I’m there. And in this mass produced society that we’re living in, having an artisanal bowl that someone made, my hand is definitely something that I think will be going on in the future. So I’m buying it. Do you have anything else for stock up? Stock up? Thinking your job is important. This is kind of where the book immediately started. To lose me. To be honest with you, I want you to be honest with one. Apparently white collar crimes. Elicit day of in person visits, like with some murder they’re trying to investigate. She gets visited by two people immediately because her husband’s missing. Okay, so you’re talking about Grady or who’s that? Gary Grady? Yeah, Grady. And then the other two people that we would make more sense because you make sense. The FBI agent doesn’t make much sense, right? It should be a major red flag at radio visits, but then two other people immediately visit. So I was like, oh, I guess white collar crime is really important, and people are, I don’t know. And then throughout the whole town, people are looking at them weird. I don’t know what anyone else does in my town. I don’t know what any other dads did. You know? Kind of of what they did, but no one to fucking know the coder of a social media company. Whether that social media company just went in a business or did some shady shit, no one would give a shit. No one would care. No one would look at you weird in school. That didn’t make any sense to me. Can you name one Enron employee? Can you name one person that went to jail? Can you name anything about Enron. That was the biggest Enron. That was the biggest scam in US history. And the reason it was so big is because there are so many people that they had hired this company just IPO. So I assume it’s not really that big of a company. Comparatively, it just didn’t make any sense. So thinking that someone coder at a company would be that important, and people would really care that much for thinking your job. I guess that is. I don’t know. But I will give Play Devil’s advocate here and give Laura Dave some credit. She did say that it was like a very small community that they were part of, and everyone was familiar with each other and spent time together. So the idea that they would know what Owen did is not super surprising, considering that it was on the radio. Whatnot it’s like? Oh, isn’t that company? But I don’t know if it would be cyteyinger and stuff like that, but whatever that is what it is. If you went into your high school and some dad was part of some company, would you give a shit? No, not at all. Which also leads to later on when the idea of Owen protecting Bailey because she doesn’t know. So people don’t know, like her grandfather was the lawyer for some Mafia people. It’s like, who cares what? Yeah, it’s a lawyer. Yeah. So her grandfather is the Sean Penn character in Carlito’s Way. Who cares? I don’t. Yeah, right. So that made no sense. But I’m not sure about stock up on. Well, I guess I’m saying I never think my job is that important, but apparently it could be if our company just goes under and a bunch of stockholders crazy shit goes down, get shit on or people are going to be like, what the fuck, man? I’ll be like, oh, shit. You knew I worked there, like, nice. It’s kind of important. All of a sudden, stock up for me. Houseboats seems pretty cool. I didn’t know there was this community of houseboats in Sausalito where people just live on their boat. And RVing is a thing. People are really jazzed about RV these days, but I don’t hear a lot of houseboat talk. And as someone who’s currently residing on a Lake, I was thinking about how cool it would be if instead of buying a house, you just bought a houseboat and just lived on the Lake. Best of both worlds, you don’t have to a you’re off the grid. And I mean, like, the grid of the government tracking you according to this book, because for some reason, they can’t track you if you’re on a houseboat because it’s like a rental or something. Quote unquote. But it just seems like you wake up, you see the water in the morning. You don’t have to pay these huge property taxes. Small don’t have a lot of space to clean. My question is, have you not seen the replacements? Oh, I have seen the replacements for sure. Keano lives in a houseboat. Miles and miles of heart, kid. Come on. The stock for houseboats have been way up since Keano. Why can I not think of what his character’s name is in that? Because it’s a great name. Let me see. Shane Falco.

Participant #1:

His job is scrubbing barnacles off the bottom of boats, so it would be interesting. And I have a question. This is probably the most important question. This podcast is the replacement and point break in the same universe. Oh, universe. I’ve heard that before. Did he blow the game? No, it was a different story. He blew out his shoulder USC or something, but in the other one, he blew the game. But confusion could happen. I can see that’s not the worst. Yeah. So after he lets Bodie go, they don’t know. Bodie actually dies, so they have to put him in some sort of witness protection, so they leave him on some houseboat. And then he does exactly what Owen does in this book and says, oh, you know what? This thing under the radar. I’m going to get a high profile gig and see what happens. Yeah, I have a bunch of later. Save it. Save it. My last stock up food stuffs. Just food things in general, like my food. But this is a good book for this California restaurant scene. La’s Felix. I think it’s Bar Felix or Restaurant Felix or whatever super famous. See now actually recently opened, like, maybe in the last couple of years. Italian joint Evan Funke is the head chef there. They dropped that name. It was like Hannah and Bailey went to dinner there, and Bailey was like, being a snob or a little brat. Really? What you’re at? Literally one of the nicest. This guy makes pasta by hand in a cage, and you get to watch him. Also a great YouTube video. It’s kind of like a cage glass cage, but great YouTube video. Bon Appetit, I think, does it. He makes, like, 26 pastas and shows you how to do it phenomenal. All the guy seems like kind of a Dick. But Felix, that’s on there, Bouchon. They referenced that with whatever the Abbott’s wife, she’s like, oh, I didn’t get my roast chicken and chocolate. Souffle from Bouchon, that’s Thomas Keller’s secondary joint. Thomas Keller, maybe, like, the most famous chef in America. So good name drop there. And then some issues. One Hanna can’t Brown butter. That’s pretty sad. You go to all these hips, like, on every part of some sort of cooking all these hip spots and kept Brown butter really takes no effort. So shame on you. What do you do to Brown butter? You put butter in a pan and Cook it, stirring constantly. Way harder than that. You have to know when it’s browned before it’s burnt, you take it off the heat before. But at the same time, if they’re going to places like this I feel like they’re foodie people. So get it together. And also the reference that Owen can make a ten layer chocolate cake. I have so many questions. One, why are you why are you making a ten layer chocolate cake? It’s so unnecessary. But is it a crepe cake? Because if it’s a regular spot, like sponge cake, why are you cutting a cake into ten layers for? Because it’s more frosty. You just add more to the outside Frost. But it’s so much effort that there must be a huge occasion. So did she see him do it once? And it was good. Also analogy for him. Think about that. He has ten layers to him. It’s deep. You just don’t understand the deep. You’re a little guy. I go on top. I float on top, like, fat on top of a stock. But yeah, so that bothered me. The ten layer cake thing. Owen can make a ten layer cake. It’s like, okay, why? What? When who how many times have he done this? How thick was this cake? Even a wedding cake. Three layers, four layers, whatever. So, yeah, food stuff. Stock up. But Owens cakemaking ability. Stock down, prize entrances, stock down. I really, really was upset when Grady was just, like, sitting on her porch, and it shows up and she says, you must be Hannah. If someone did that on my porch, I don’t give a shit what they say after that. I literally hate the person. You can’t go to someone’s porch and just presume, you know, the person, unless you’re about to hand them some money. Just a dickhead move all around my Grady, and then the other cops do the same thing in her backyard. Just walk in and they’re in her back. She’s like, what the fuck are you doing here? And they’re like, oh, you must be Hannah. It’s like, hey, who the fuck are you? What, are you in my backyard? How about we start with that? Just common courtesy. It’s really upset me. I’m sorry, but like, you can’t do this shit. And then she goes and gets coffee with this dude. There’s zero chance of going to get coffee with him. Just zero. I’m not going anywhere with you. But go take your fucking fake ass badge. Get out of here. For the story sake. He should have not been a cop. It would have made it things actually better, but, yeah, it would have been better if he was Charlie if he was like him and he was in with the family. But couldn’t be clear on who he was because he didn’t want her to find out. Also, this Grady character wears a backwards hat and like, a bomber jacket or something. And he’s in a US Marshal. I’m just so confused by that. Who’s the guy from The Matrix that’s in The Fugitive movies. I was just going to say, quote, The Fugitive. Yeah. I mean, the only US Marshalls I know are from Fugitive and the movie. Yeah, which also, I do appreciate that that was referenced in the book. Like, hey, the only US marshals I know are like, from the Future, which is a phenomenon. All right, great reference, phenomenal movie and a really good sequel, considering how good sequel. Yeah, it was really good. Yeah. Joe Pantoliono, the guy from The Matrix returns on them. Whatever. The point is, he seems like the kind of guy would wear a backwards hat and a varsity jacket and walk around to be as Marshall, which is? This guy was like, hey, get the fuck off my porch. And if I saw someone like that, I’d assume I was just getting served papers. Like, if someone was like, me to porch and you still be pissed, that person definitely wouldn’t be like, I’ll get a coffee sock down on that. Fuck the price entrances stock down for me. Besides, literally everything I’m going to go with trusting your significant other. There’s red flags all over the place, all over the place. And the fact that she was so blown away by the fact that he had a past Besides the one that he had told her about. It was so shocking to me how shocking it was to her. You know what I’m saying? No. Explain, please. So they’re married, right? He has no family to speak of. No family whatsoever at all. Nobody. Okay. Not absurd, but definitely questionable. No friends, no friends from his past. He’s got friends from since you guys have met. Really? But no friends from his past makes zero sense. Well, he did just move there, right? No reference to friends? No. Like, hey, this guy is coming to visit. We should go here. We’re married. We’re going to visit my friends. And then probably most importantly, Bailey’s mom’s family is just nonexistent. Even though her mom’s dead. Wouldn’t her family want to see her, like, holidays and stuff? It’s like, okay, Bailey is going to go to her grandparents on her mom’s side for these holidays just to hang out? No, at no point been concerned that you’ve never seen or heard from anyone from ten years ago, like, ten years or more in his life and never rung a Bell. And then every time these things come up for her, she’s like, oh, my God, I can’t believe it. I never thought about that. Or they just do these smash cuts in the book to two years ago, and it would be a situation where someone came to him and said something weird and she would not find that to be odd. Put two and two together here, Hannah. It doesn’t take a genius to just be confused that his path doesn’t come together in the way that he’s said it to you. I will say Owen did a great job with the whole I’m from Boston, Massachusetts, sounding very similar to Austin. If you’ve seen road trip. Yeah, Austin, Boston. At certain times, I was listening to it. I was like, Wait, what did you say? Is he from Boston or Austin? And I was like, oh, Owen smart. That’s an easy out right there. I’ve always been saying Austin. I didn’t say Boston. What are you talking about? But she could have asked him. She could have asked him very specifically. He went to Newton. She’d be like, do you go to Newton North or Newton South? Well, people aren’t going to know. I guess that’s how you right away would work in a non technology age. But if you think some woman is meeting a guy and not Googling his name or anything along those lines, you’re crazy. Plus, everyone on social media, even if you didn’t have social media, there’s still some sort of a paper trail if you didn’t find one, that would raise red flags immediately. Well, she’s also a recluse, also herself, right? She doesn’t have much family, so she’s just very willing to accept it. She’s ready to. Oh, this guy is just like me. Yeah. The fact that he would never see a friend or family member would be very odd to me. And also that’s something in someone else that you’re attracted to, at least for me, it’s a total deal breaker if they don’t have friends. Like, what? You’re just like one of those people that doesn’t have any friends. That’s confusing. And see you later, because I don’t trust those people. Fair enough. Stock down. Yeah, that I also had trust at stock down. So we’re on the same page. We trust each other. That’s what matters. Yeah. A couple of you missed, though. One is that she continuously was like, I don’t know if I should trust this person and then would do something that would completely ruin her life if she didn’t trust the person. For instance, she tells Grady that she’s hiding 600K plus in cash in her cabinet. The next sentence is, I’m not sure if I should trust this guy. You just implemented yourself in a literally implicated. What did I say implemented implicated herself in literally. If that money is not clean, then, yeah, federal crime for sure. Oh, yeah, 100%. You’re going to prison if you’re hiding 600 and nobody just holds around cash for no reason. Right? Like, there’s something sketchy going on. So just doing that alone, and then you say you don’t trust the guy. I’m like, why the fuck did you tell him about the cash then? And also the lawyer, her ex husband, who she probably just should have stayed with, tells her to move the cash, because that’s literally the only thing that would send her to prison. And she’s like, no, just keep it there. She doesn’t do anything after that’s. The one thing she told her to do. So trusting the wrong people. And then wouldn’t the FBI. Sorry to interrupt. You. Wouldn’t the FBI on your Ranch, which is renting. I hope people I feel bad for listeners here. I don’t want to hear these two people rant, but I’m sorry, but I’m sorry for Lord Dave. I’m sorry that this is happening. It’s not our fault. We try to listen and read books that everyone enjoys, and sometimes we don’t have hits. And we’re going to tell you how we do. To be fair, we rant and shit on our books. They like as well. So we’re equal opportunity employer. We’re equal Opportunity Ranchers. But wouldn’t the FBI have a search warrant for their houseboat to get his hard drives and stuff like that? And it would probably involve them being able to search the premises? I don’t know. I’ve seen a couple of movies in my day. The first thing I would do would be a I wouldn’t touch and count the money with my hands so that you’d have fingerprints all over it. But I understand how you could do that in a moment of stress. Yeah, but then I would 1 million% give that money to my best friend or whatever and say, hey, can you hold on? I know this is super sketchy, but I don’t know what’s happening right now, and this can’t be in my house, right? Yeah. I live in a houseboat. There’s four rooms. It’s under the sink, fucking hide it. All of this shit would go down before it got released to the public. They’d already be arresting or investigating people. All the shit. It wouldn’t be like the media leaked it, and then all of a sudden, the investigation starts. It wouldn’t work like that. So they’d already have gone through all these people’s houses by then, before it even. Yeah, Lawrence would have came down. I understand that he might have gotten away quicker, but because he knew the leak, but his house would have been searched. Those FBI agents would have. And I don’t know how the FBI works, but I feel like they would have had probable cause or whatever it is to get a warrant from a judge to say, I can search this guy’s house because you want to get all of his files before he deletes them. It’s crazy. Yeah. What else do you have? I had trade deadline mistakes, South Africa, just because baseball seasons around here. I mean, here’s the trade that essentially he makes or as Bailey, I guess, would make. Are you willing to either never see your dad again, but live your normal life, quote, unquote in your hometown with your stepmom, or just move again with your dad and be with your dad instead of being with some random stepmom. And then I guess the 600K. There’s a variable under there, but whatever. But I don’t understand how protecting her would be making her start a whole new life with a random fucking person that she doesn’t like. How is that a good trade for her? That doesn’t make any sense to me. I will say as a product of divorce and someone that has a step mom and a father. I would probably just be like, hey, let’s just stay together. Like, whatever work in a machine shop. I’d like everyone to be together. It’s not nothing against the stepmom. It’s just like, I’d rather be us be together than have some money and you advance your career. But I guess there’s more important things in life. Listen, David, this is one of my hate. No, save it, save it, save it. Because this is the Chappelle show haters ball coming up. All right, so if you didn’t like the rants in the first half, get ready for the next. Let’s pick a character. I mean, there’s lovable characters, not. And there’s hateable characters. Many. But who did you at least get some sort of relationship with in this book? I think this one is the easiest pick I’ve ever had. The best character in this book is Owen, for sure. First, they describe it as Owen Wilson, blonde hair, goofy, just living life. Good looking dude. Great. We love that. And he’s just the smartest person in the book because he abandons Bailey, who is the absolute worst person in any book I’ve ever read. So he gets rid of Bailey, gets started whole new life. That’s a win win for everyone, right? That’s just a great move by him and just have to not make light of abandoning children. That’s like, do you read about? The whole thing is how much he loves Bailey, but really, he just hates her. And she thinks Bailey is literally and this is more of a negative. But Bailey just means to literally every single person talks down to everyone shifts all over Hannah for no reason for like, two years and then runs away. And no pivotal point in the book for no reason. Zero reason just can’t take it just leaves no big deal, no reason. So again, it’s an ultimate smart woman by Owen gets rid of his parenting responsibilities, doesn’t have to fucking raise that nightmare anymore. Yes, it was just a great job. A couple more things about Owen, which are great is that he says his biggest strength as a person is that he’d do anything for his daughter. Except I obviously quit his job, which is running a scam, which he’s going to come for or not just lay low a little bit. But yeah, everything else he would do for his daughter. I’m having such a tough time responding because I have it later and I don’t want to get into it too early. I don’t want to pop the chair. One more thing is that Owen is this really smart mathematician that works hard, which we love to see. Good job. The thing is, though, that he writes code initially for a lawyer that’s untraceable or something like that. I couldn’t really see what’s going on, which I don’t think you can turn over communications between lawyers and your client to the government. No. What do I know about that doesn’t make any sense. I definitely can’t. Although if they were involved in illegal activity, I’m not a lawyer. I do know a couple of things. And the one thing I know is if they are involved in illegal activity, they could get that information. So if he was actually passing notes that were for hits and stuff like that, I don’t even know why they’d write it down. Like a good lawyer. This guy’s the best lawyer. It wouldn’t be something. Okay, let us track all the notes that are sent between these people. Unless he was trying to create, like, some sort of backup in case the Mafia turned on him, he would have some information. But it didn’t seem like that was the case. He was just like, all right, this is a proper way to take notes. So I’m just going to encrypt it. And then the last thing is they talk about how he’s a mathematician, and he wanted to choose a job that was slightly different than math, although they just talked about there how he’s a coder that creates code that makes it hard to track people or track messages. And then he joins a company, a social media company that he codes for. That makes it hard to track messages. Like, how are they not connecting the dots here? They’re exactly the same job. Plus, what happens when this company actually gets IPOed, right? Then they release all the people’s names. Well, it’s not his name, but at the same time, it’s one of those things. Like, if it’s a company, you’re going to have a face on a website. Isn’t that the point? Especially if he’s that important? Yeah, he’s the number one. He’s a head coat, er or whatever. He could have quit at any time. Okay, so you like Owen, even though just basically just relieving Bailey because she’s miserable. Okay, Bailey, when she finds out that her whole life is a lie, she’s like, so my birthday isn’t even right. My birthday. Your dad’s missing. Like, what are we doing here? My birthday isn’t even right. Sorry, I’m a Scorpio. I’m not a Libra. What’s my moon sign? My favorite character was fuck this book. Let’s get into love hate. No, I thought my favorite character was really, like, Hannah’s friend, who seemed like the most normal of all the people. I thought for sure she was going to be turned out to be involved in it. Double agent. I was, like, the only reason this person existed to be a double agent. I’m like, here we go. And then they couldn’t even do the normal trope. They couldn’t even get right. I want it. I was like, I’ll at least allow that. But now what do you love about this book? Let’s get through this quickly. Clocking someone. I think that’s a cool way to say observed. She says, clocking someone a bunch. What? I didn’t notice that one time. Oh, really? Okay. It would be like he quickly looked over at the painting, and I clocked that. I saw that I noticed that type of thing. Yeah, I liked it. I liked the more collective form of clocking, which is punching somebody in the face. Okay. And I like to work cul. I don’t know how to say that what I loved was the ending. And not just because this fucking buck was over with, but because when the airplane blows up. Yeah, not because the airplane didn’t blow up, unfortunately, but mostly because I think literally the last line is Bailey calling her mum, which I threw the book at the wall was like, oh, my God. I laughed out loud for a good two minutes, and I was like, wow, we’ve gone this far. We’ve really got it down. We boiled it down to this level of bullshit where she goes. Okay, mom. Oh, my God. Shut the fuck up. You wouldn’t call her mom. It doesn’t matter. Just end this whole thing. How dare you. That’s how you end your novel. You end your novel with the stepdaughter calling her stepmom mom, come on, be more of a fucking Disney Channel original movie. Well, Hannah’s whole existence is to please Bailey, which makes her an awful character. And then Bailey is an awful person. So they’re like, you have two people that are terrible, that’s your whole book is foundations on. How do you like these? Even if it was an amazing story, you’d still hate those characters. And I totally get there’s. As someone who has a stepmother, has a sister, there is a tough relationship between those people. I understand that. But the point is, if someone is just an asshole to you over and over again, you don’t just sit there and keep trying to please them and be like, oh, I’m doing my best. I totally understand her feelings. It’s like, Why do you she’s just being rude and mean. It’s different when you have that tough relationship. But just to be outright rude. And the dad kind of like, Pat her on the arm and be like, one day, it’ll be fine. Fuck him. Fuck her like, no, you treat people with respect. It’s as simple as that. 100%, 100%. We went to dinner. It’s like, oh, we’re going to go to this play in the park, and she’s like, oh, do I have to? It’s like, a you love plays. She’s obviously doing this for you. Totally get it. No big deal. I get how that could be unfortunate. She’s like, no, you go with your dad. It’s fine. Next time. Next time, she’s like, then me and Bailey really connected when she thought knew I was saying, next time, no, she was happy. She walked all over you. What? You’re sidewalk, you’re cobblestones. And I could also see being like, Listen, I’m not going to ruffle feathers here with this Bailey girl, like, obviously, I want to develop relationships. But when she starts saying rude or other random people. That’s where I draw the line. Stopping a fucking bitch like, Seriously, I don’t care if you shit on me, but don’t do it to other people. You’re just raising a bad. You’re being mean to waiters and Bible people like, no, that’s not going to check for me. I do have a thing for people that are rude to service people. I fucking hate it. That’s a big. I’ve never seen that before. I haven’t really seen it myself. I’ve seen someone snap at a waiter and that bothered me, and I was like, Yo, let’s never do that again. You don’t want to be in that group, but if it was a child, that was being rude to someone who’s legitimately just serving them. Owen, who are you raising here? This is this daughter that you’re going to protect. No wonder you’re not actually protecting her because good God. All right. Yeah. I just never understood why I found out Owen has just been lying to me this whole time. I say I give up the deuces to Bailey and say, see you later. 1 million. I’m out of five. Good luck. Good luck with everything. You should have been nicer than me earlier. What did you have for hate? All right, let me try to make this distinct as possible. Try manufacturing drama. That is literally the underlying underlying thing of this. From the ambiguous notes for no reason. There’s no coded message in there. There’s no reason he couldn’t write a long note. There’s zero reason. I didn’t like the ambiguous notes in not Angels and Demons, but the other move DaVinci code. At least there was some story behind it, right? There’s reason to be it. Whatever. But why the fake cheating husband? She’s like, oh, we invested all our money there. There’s no reason for that story. Just non zero. There’s no reason the Chapel discussion being 100 pages about having to convince someone give them the list. That was such a long SEG. No drama at all. I’m like, who gives a fuck? Just either tell them or don’t. I don’t care like asking a professor or tracking down or asking a question to a professor from a public University being Oceans eleven. What are we doing here? Why is this Ocean’s eleven? You can sit on any class at a public University, or you could get the attention of a teacher. He’s not going to be an asshole for no reason. It doesn’t make any sense why he was preventing them and creating drama. Zero sense entering Nicholas house after she’s been driven. There being like, I guess I got to enter here. And her having this interim dialogue about whether she should enter. You’ve already been there. You were in the car for an hour trying to figure this one out. Why are we having this discussion? Oh, they’re going down the list. They literally have the names that could be Owen. They have a full list, and then Bailey is like, no, I need to go to this bar right this instant because I remember it from some fucking memory that I had from ten years ago. It doesn’t make any sense. They leave instead of checking the list would take 30 minutes to find a name that they need, so they don’t even need to go to the bar. But instead, they don’t do that only for Bailey not to go into the bar. She forces them to leave the library from checking this stuff. And then Bailey doesn’t even go in the bar. Which doesn’t make any sense. Why? What? Protect her? Why? Raising my voice? I can’t even tell. I think you’re going to lose your voice and then breaking your phone. At that point, I literally looked around like I was being pumped. Why are you breaking your phone? What? No, I don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense. She’s tracking me. It’s like, where do you think they’re tracking you? To the same place you are now, why are you breaking your phone now? I have a bunch more, but I’m going to let you say that. Well, that was a rant of a lifetime. I’m just glad I’m here for it. That was the best reason for me to read this book. So thank you. Really? My number one hate is. Well, this is obvious, but Reese Witherspoon

Participant #1:

that’s the clip. The publisher must have offered her a bag to put this book on her list. Must have offered her a bag. I don’t understand how the publisher Reese Witherspoon Book Club works, but it 100% has to have some green backs behind it. She sold out worse than Purdue Pharma does with, like, a small rate Floridian pharmacist or something. This is her version of selling Oxycott into the kids because, Jesus, this took years off my life and all because she put her stamp of approval on it. I can assure you, Reese Witherspoon a wonderful actress, a very smart and beautiful woman loving mother, did not read this piece of shit book, because if she had, she would not have put it on us. But some publicists out there said, hey, we’re going to get 15K for you to just put your stamp on it. She’s like, yeah, fuck you. Put the stamp on it. This is a horrible book. And if it wasn’t for Reese Witherspoon neither of us and thousands of other people out there wouldn’t have had to read and waste their time on this book. I feel sorry for you, but I understand that’s as simple as just getting rid of all your work. This is my first dip into your book club books, and it will be my last because of how poor this decision was. That’s fair. What else did Jeffrey? How does the Nicholas family know that Owen is missing? The whole reason he ran away is to prevent them from finding out that he’s missing. Oh, I didn’t catch that. They’re like, oh, your husband’s missing. Yeah. Also, once you’re going to trust Bailey’s grandparents and do that meeting, why don’t you give the kid over to them? It’s not your kid. They’re related to her. You let them deal with her, right? Like you’ve already determined that you. But Owen wants you to be. Owen never fucking came back and reunited with her. Doesn’t see her for the next 30 years. They say, who the fuck cares? Why would she want to form a relationship with her grandfather? Who she knew was the reason why she couldn’t see her dad. It’s like, oh, your grandfather’s keeping you from seeing your dad, and he’s going to murder him if he sees them. Oh, hey, Grandpa, we’re cool. Let’s grab a snow cone. That’s a good point. But snow. But why is this Hannah’s response? I feel like we’re in this book where we’re just saying questions. Did you notice how this book was just like, all in Hannah’s head? Just asking questions to herself? Let me pull this up. I have a quote here from the book, a paragraph that I think sums up the book pretty well. How am I here again on the phone with Jake. How is Jake the one who is helping me? When we ended our relationship? Jake said I’d always felt absent to him. I didn’t argue with him. I couldn’t because I was a little absent. It felt like something was missing with Jake. The very thing I thought had happened with Owen. But if Jake is correct about Owen, then Owen and I don’t have what I thought we did. Maybe we didn’t have anything close to it at all. It’s verbal diarrhea, absolute verbal diarrhea. That paragraph makes no sense. I think it’s a shame for women that this is how she thinks women think. Because Yikes, just Yikes. How do you know what they think? I don’t. And I watch the Mel Gibson movie all the time just to see if I can learn anything from it. Yeah, I don’t. But I would hope that no one thinks like this woman. Man, turtle fucking placebium. What is the little tiny creatures that are one cells? Whatever those are. No, but yes, those are one cells. Are they one? I think so. But whatever the thing is, plankton. Maybe. I don’t know. But, Yikes, it was just like that. Over 300 pages. Another thing I hated here was I’ll get to it. Owen, I didn’t like Owen. Like you said, my favorite character. Like you said, if his daughter is his world and he would do anything for her, then why did he do the things he did? Why take the whole high profile job? You know, eventually it’s going to come out. Why marry a woman who’s high profile in her own line of work? There’s connections. There nothing made sense. Become a sheet metal fabricator in Iowa and just live your life with your daughter and be very happy. It’s as simple as that shameful. Also, he grilled Hannah on their second date about the guys she’s been with in the past. Talk about red flags. That’s so creepy. Oh, who are the guys you’ve been with? How many guys have you been with? How were they? What if that’s not creepy enough? He told his 16 year old daughter to use an encrypted app when she sends nudes. That’s fucking sexy talk, not nudes. Come on, man. What do you think? Sexy talk is the pictures worth a thousand words? Yeah, I don’t have a kid. So I was like, I don’t know if people are doing that, but that’s weird to me. Oh, hey, you know what? Don’t ever send a nude to somebody, all right? Don’t ever have sexy talk. You’re 16, for Christ’s sake. It was a nice plug for a signal. Is that a real brand? I think it is. Okay, well, also, I’ll get to my next table while you’re looking at up the logic of the whole thing. I mean, we’ve kind of discussed this, but the Mafia doesn’t fuck with families. So why does Hannah need to broker a deal for her and Bailey’s safety? They’re not after her and Bailey. They’re after Owen. They’re not going to kill them. So why broker deal? It’s like, okay, the end of this deal is me and Bailey are safe. It’s like you would have been safe anyways. Makes no sense. Also, when they’re looking for this wedding, this wedding, that’s going to lead them on this quest. This national treasure, DA Vinci Code type wedding they’ve been searching for. They keep saying, oh, no, it couldn’t have been 2007. Why? Because Bailey would have been too young to remember. Okay, so what year was it? 2008. How do you know the memory of a child between a year and then Hannah says it, and I was like, hey, that was stupid. And then Bailey says that she’s like, no, it couldn’t have been 2007, because I couldn’t have remembered. Then that’s not how memory works. It’s not like, one year it’s on, and one year it’s off at the age of ten. You now remember everything, but nine. No, definitely not so stupid. That’s all I had for hate. And I think I’ve got it out. I think I got it out. I had one lingering question. What was Owen’s plan if he didn’t get married and wasn’t able to pond Bailey off on Hannah? And why didn’t he just revert to that plan once this happened? Yeah. What was the plan? I think you put her in a bag and throw in a river, right? No, he didn’t want her. I think we found the real story of this book is Owen fucking hated. Bailey realized he’s a garbage human. Probably caused the scam to happen at this company so that he could have an excuse. Yes. And they’re like, oh, my God. What a good guy. So he comes off smelling like roses somehow. And then he doesn’t have to deal with Bailey. Great. When’s Owen doing right now on The Lamb. What’s his life on the Lamb? He’s probably having the best time of his life. Let’s get the listener mail. What do you have? You’ve got mail? Oh, thank you. All listeners. And hey, I really do. I apologize for this episode. It’s cathartic. I get it. If you didn’t enjoy it. I totally get that, too. It’s just two guys getting angry. So thanks to all listeners for asking questions and calling in. All right. This one’s from Ellie from San Diego. Great. Nice. Give me your number. Yeah. Per usual. The kids suck. I think we might have talked about that a little bit. I know we touched on that yet. Where is the murder? How can someone claim this as a thriller? Wow. This sounds kind of like summer read when there isn’t some kind of violent death. Great question. I have actually read a lot of, I would say, summer books in this vein. So then she was gone. Was very popular. The guest list hunting party. We read the hunting party hunting party. I’ve read a few other ones that are female centric girl on the train. I really liked with mystery and thriller, and there’s always some sort of dark shit. The fact that this book is a quote, unquote mystery thriller, a complete abomination to all mysteries and thrillers out there, there’s literally no mystery. And if there’s no mystery, there’s even less of a thriller. I was so unthilled reading this book that I was watching the Olympics at the same time, and I was watching a 1500 meters run and being ten times more enthralled than reading this book, I had to put the book down to finish watching a 1000 thousand 1500 meters run. So if you’re asking where the summer beach read comes in to this particular book, it has to be a summer Olympic, and it has to be the most boring sport. It has to be fencing. It has to be the 8000 meters, whatever you need to have the most boring thing on in the background. Reading this book makes that event that much better. So how this is a summer beach read has to be an Olympic. Watch some boring sports. The Olympics will become the most interesting part of your day. Right before we did this, he said, I don’t want to trash it. Here we are. You got my blood up. You got my fucking blood up. It’s your fault. You started with that, like 20 minutes rant, whatever that was. But it was so good. I do these rants for books I don’t even like, though, so usually keep it tempered. I know if it affected me, it really sucks. Yeah. Truthfully. My goal throughout this whole podcast is to ensure that no one freeze this book. No one. I told a friend I said my goal in life after reading this book is going to be to quit my job and to go to every single library and bookstore and take all of these copies off the shelf and steal kids book burning and steal them. I am supporting book burning for this particular book. Yeah, we can cast the movie. So Reese Riverspoon is co producing a movie for Apple TV star and Julia Roberts. Laura Dave is writing the screenplay boo with the assist from her husband, Josh Singer, who actually won an Academy Award for writing Spotlight, which is a phenomenal movie. So this movie, who do you like in it? Owen Wilson. I just keep on saying on Wilson, Hannah Reese Witherspoon

Participant #1:

no, I’m making her suffer the fate of playing Hannah because she made us read this, so she’s playing it. The only character I have is Bailey. What do you got? The eldest daughter from Mrs. Doubtfire? Because it’s pretty much the same character. What? You don’t remember her? Oh, my God. You should watch Mrs. Doubtfire, and you’ll be like, oh, I get it. I know who Bailey is. I had the daughter from California Casino, actually, no, that’s not what I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of the daughter from the guy from Banda Brothers. It’s got Claire Danes in Homeland. Yes, the daughter from Homeland. Would you recommend this book? I can’t believe we talk this one, but it’s like, I’m so sorry not cracking the top ten for me. There’s a pass for me. Unfortunately. Yeah, this is a hard pass. It’s definitely the worst book we’ve read on the Pod, and I’m sorry. I hope no one listened to the last five minutes last week when we told you we are going to listen to this one because if I feel bad, we won’t do this again. I promise you, we will not. You live and you learn well, but let’s get some more positive notes. We’re going to stick with a mystery thriller, but we’re going to stick with something that’s good. Let’s get back to Jerry Rice. All right. I don’t need Oglettree in here or whoever some random wide receiver is. What have you got? What do we got for next time? And then there are none by Agatha Christie. It’s about a bunch of people that go somewhere, and I didn’t want to read too much because I don’t like that. But people die one after one and again. Listeners, thanks for tagging along. If you read the book, I really hope this was a cathartic experience for you, as well as it was for us. If you have any notes on this book, please let us know. We will definitely talk back to you, but we’re probably going to try to close this chapter of our lives until next time. Great. Talk to you. Take care.