Book Review: One by One

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Thriller

This one, even while reading it, I felt like this definitely wasn’t Frieda’s best work. I did still enjoy this one and couldn’t put it down, but everything seemed really mid. It just didn’t feel the same as Frieda’s other work.

Continue reading for more details.

Synopsis:

One by one, they will get what they deserve...

A night spent sleeping on dirt and leaves is not how Claire Matchett expected to spend her vacation.

She thought this would be a break from the stresses of work and raising her young children. A chance to repair her damaged marriage. A week of hiking and hot tubs with two other couple friends. It sounded like heaven.

Then Claire’s minivan breaks down on a lonely dirt road. With no cell reception, the group has no choice but to hike the rest of the way to their hotel. But it turns out the woods aren’t as easy to navigate as they thought.

Hours later, they are lost. Hopelessly lost.

And as they navigate deeper into the woods, the members of their party are struck down mysteriously one by one. Has a wild animal been hunting them? Or is the hunter one of them?

But as more time passes, one thing becomes clear:

Only one of them will return home alive.

Review:

All the characters didn’t really resonate with me. None of them felt fully developed, maybe Claire was the most developed from all of them but that’s probably because she was the main character. They all felt quite two dimensional and flat. I think some of the reason for that is because of the larger cast of characters than Frieda’s usual amount (two-three important characters) which probably made it harder to develop each of them properly, how the story had constant events playing out so we couldn’t focus much on the characters, and how the book was quite quick and short.

“At the end of this week, only one of us will make it home alive.”

If we look past that, the pacing of the story was perfect. I literally could not put this book down. I had work to do, but I couldn’t help it! I was so curious to know who was behind this scheme. The way everyone was dropping like flies in different ways, I was itching for the big revelation. There was constant tension and action, and as the story went on, the more and more questions I had. A very easy, fast paced read to get you out of a reading slump for sure!

“We had to move after you gouged the eye out of that McCormick kid.”

The big revelation! Okay, so, mixed feelings. I did not see it coming (not a surprise) and was amazed that everything turned out how it did because I did not see many options in this situation, but oh I was so wrong. I think the plot twist was planned out in a very smart way and executed nicely as well. Now, the downside for me was that the motives and reason for why the things that happened were very…questioning? It was just like did that really lead to all this? Like the motives were quite underwhelming and felt very loosely connected to the “anonymous”’s past. It seemed very stereotypical and basic.

Overall,

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