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emily_mh's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
The first 60% of this was a one-star read which is the main reason behind my low rating for this book. Instead of being a mystery/thriller it was actually a dry, insta-lovey romance with a mystery side plot. Little investigation was carried out. You could go entire chapters without new information being uncovered. To top it off one of the MCs, Brynn, was so bland. There was absolutely nothing that made her stand apart from other MCs in the genre. I was just so hugely bored and could find no redeeming qualities in this section.
The last 40% was an improvement, being more like a four star read. There were some intriguing developments and actual investigation and for the first time I felt entertained. I ended up liking where the mystery ended up. Tripp became a dimensional character as we got insight into his guilt and shame. He underwent some serious development in offloading this, and trusting and connecting with others. Even the romance started to improve because the MCs were pretty natural around each other.
However, even in this last section I had criticisms. Unlike Tripp, Brynn didn’t get any development. I feel like we were supposed to see that she had learnt to balance her journalism with people’s emotions, but this was not conveyed well as she still kept pushing for answers at other people’s expense until the very end. I also wish that the book had offered a critique of true crime seeing as it attempted to look at journalism with nuance (even though I don’t think this was well done either).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Car accident, Murder, Abandonment, and Alcohol
Moderate: Cursing, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Violence, Kidnapping, Stalking, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Minor: Ableism, Confinement, Gore, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Sexual harassment
Major: binge drinking Minor: sick parent, divorce, adoptionspookily's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Bullying, Gun violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, and Classism
Minor: Child abuse, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Medical content, Dementia, and Classism
greenlivingaudioworm's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Car accident, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
bookcaptivated's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Blood, Murder, Abandonment, and Alcohol
Moderate: Kidnapping, Car accident, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Minor: Bullying, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, and Medical content
aformeracceleratedreader's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
Not my favorite by Karen M McManus but def better than You'll be the Death of Me.
I liked the twists and turns and finding out who really was responsible for Mr Larkin's death. I wasn't expecting the whodunnit but I am notoriously bad at figuring that sort of thing out. Also liked the little nod to One of Us is Lying.
My only complaint with her books overall is the lack of diversity.
I liked the twists and turns and finding out who really was responsible for Mr Larkin's death. I wasn't expecting the whodunnit but I am notoriously bad at figuring that sort of thing out. Also liked the little nod to One of Us is Lying.
My only complaint with her books overall is the lack of diversity.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Toxic relationship, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Classism
Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Domestic abuse, and Emotional abuse
valpuri's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, Sexual harassment, and Classism
imstephtacular's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Death, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Minor: Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Stalking, Car accident, Pregnancy, and Gaslighting
nickoliver's review against another edition
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
I have read quite a few books by McManus so far. This was the fourth of hers I’d picked up, and definitely one of my least favourites. Not because it was bad by any means, but it just felt like an incredibly average mystery to me.
First of all, the characters weren’t very interesting. The book was told from two POVs - Brynn, who moved back to town, and Tripp, her former best friend. After having gotten her dream internship - at Motive, a true-crime show -, Brynn was determined to solve a four-year-old case from her hometown: her old English teacher Mr. Larkin, who’d gotten murdered in the woods behind the school and had been found by Tripp and classmates Shane and Charlotte. While there was occasionally a shorter chapter that followed Tripp on the day of the murder, most of the story was set in present day.
There was nothing that drew me in about either character. Any depth that McManus attempted with them was abandoned way too soon. Sure, Tripp’s relationship with his incredibly shitty mother was shown, but then from a certain point onward, it didn’t really go anywhere anymore? And Brynn’s journalistic drive and her desperation to find her place in the world in the way the rest of her family did literally stopped being relevant at some point. And the further into solving the mystery she got, the less smart she acted. Like, why on earth did she think it was a smart idea to go talk to a man she knew was a domestic abuser? That another woman talked about like this: “Men like [him] are a hornet’s nest. Why poke it if you don’t have to, right?”? It was so infuriating to be in her head, and very hard to sympathise with her when she got to the find out part of fuck around and find out. Oh no, actions have consequences! Who saw that coming!
Tripp, at the same time, didn’t make things better for me. He was so incredibly boring, I wanted to weep. A celebrity’s cardboard cutout would have felt more interesting to me than him. Plus, the way he’d treated Brynn four years ago pissed me off, and while it got explained and there was obviously a redemption arc, it came a bit too late in the story and only after a few false explanations that painted him in an even shittier light.
Even worse than the characters individually was the romance that McManus forced on me. Since this was the fourth book of hers I’d read, I knew that there would be a romance - I could smell it just by reading the synposis -, and I need her to explain to me why she always feels the need to put one into every single one of her books. She writes mysteries, for crying out loud. Does she assume teenagers would never read books without romances in them?
It’s annoying to begin with, but what made it worse was the fact that Brynn and Tripp had absolutely zero chemistry. They literally would’ve made so much more sense as friends than as a couple, even more so in the context of the plot. Every time Brynn waxed poetry about Tripp’s looks or the two of them made out, it just took me out of the moment. I wish I could read mysteries - especially YA ones - without having to see the actual intrigue take a backseat to a mediocre, boring straight couple that would be better off not dating. Brynn and Tripp read like the kind of couple that dates for like three months like they’d be together forever, and then high school ends and they never see each other again. There was no real connection, and considering they were literally friends growing up, that was quite the accomplishment.
But not only the main characters, but also the side characters lacked some serious development. Especially the side characters, actually. Even the ones who seemed like they should’ve been important to the plot - literally everyone from Shane and Charlotte to Tripp’s mother to even Mr. Larkin the murder victim himself - weren’t given enough attention. That also meant that sometimes, certain plot twists just made no sense. It would’ve been impossible to figure some of them out, and what’s the point of a mystery if you can’t even guess alongside the characters? For example, How were you possibly supposed to realise that Mason was Mr. Larkin’s brother without Brynn telling you? Mason was such an underdeveloped character up until that point that there was not a single hint that could’ve led you to the truth.
Not only that, but character’s motivations were barely explained at all. There were some characters who - either from the beginning, like Charlotte with her obsession with Shane, or Mr. Larkin later in the book - would act in a way that felt incredibly inexplicable and confusing to me. And because you never before saw them act that way, nor were there any clues that might’ve made you understand, it felt very disingenuous from the author to me.
One thing that starts to piss me off about McManus, too, is how unimportant her queer characters often are, at least in books outside of One of Us Is Lying. I used to love that she made at least one character per book queer, because we have a right to exist in casual places in a story, too.
However, that warm feeling she used to give me vanished when I realised how irrelevant to the plot the characters usually were. For example, in “Nothing More to Tell”, there were two - Brynn’s sister Ellie, and her friend Mason. And while both of them showed up several times in the book, they weren’t developed very deeply or with much care - especially not Mason. It’s starting to feel more like an insult than a lovely gesture.
There were also a few too many characters. McManus didn’t seem to ever have heard that too many cooks spoil the broth. It would’ve been much better to have a few less but instead explore them better and write them with more personality - or at least a more multi-faceted personality -, instead of putting them into boxes (though from what I remember from One of Us Is Lying, she did it there too, so maybe she just has problems seeing people as more than just one descriptor).
Admittedly, I did laugh sometimes at some of the things the characters did or said. I mean, it was mainly just Al the dog and the dry way people talked to him that made me laugh, but still. It was a little bit fun in certain scenes.
So let’s move to the plot now. Thankfully, I liked that a bit more than the characters. It wasn’t incredible or mind-blowing, but it did have me hooked and intrigued, which is definitely kind of a requirement for a mystery novel, so I was pleased it at least accomplished that.
Like I mentioned above, some of the plot twists weren’t very easy to figure out - which was mainly because there weren’t enough clues to lead you to the right conclusion and not because the author was incredibly clever. And while I kind of liked who the eventual murderer was - and it did make sense to me that they did it -, the lack of an actual ending was extremely frustrating. While you could argue that that made it more realistic - after all, just because a teenage girl figures out who the killer was doesn’t mean they actually get arrested, because where’s the evidence? -, it is not something I appreciate in my thrillers and mysteries. Especially when the killer spent the entire book being a shitty, abusive person.
Plus, when there were several story lines that didn’t get wrapped up at all, it felt more like a pattern of lazy storytelling and less like a deliberate attempt to make a commentary about true crime. In fact, there was not a single part that properly ended. Tripp’s mother potentially having killed Mr. Solomon? Still up in the air. An explanation as to why Mr. Larkin was so intent on exposing his little half-brother to their abusive father? Still missing. In that same vein, none of the characters ever tried to come to terms with what they learnt about Mr. Larkin. He’d been such a popular teacher, and yet Brynn never really seemed to struggle much with the shitty things she learnt about him.
I also felt like McManus put one red herring too many in the book. Brynn and Tripp suspected so many different people throughout the book that it became annoying every time Brynn came to the conclusion that that person couldn’t have been the killer. Especially since she sometimes did it almost intuitively - she looked at their faces, saw their reactions to her questions, and seemed to immediately just know that they couldn’t have done it. Because I guess no one would ever be capable of faking shock.
The plot didn’t really seem to know where it wanted to go either. That internship Brynn started at the beginning of the story? The reason she even re-immersed herself in Mr. Larkin’s murder and started spending time with Tripp again? Literally wasn’t even relevant for the majority of the book. Additionally, I kinda felt like when it came to the internship, a lot of disbelief needed to be suspended. You really want to tell me that this popular true-crime show would let a random teenage girl lead them to the next big story? And not only that, but the way she even got the internship in the first place was laughable. Realistically, they would’ve seen her email and immediately deleted it.
Like with the characters, the plot also lacked any kind of depth. There were several topics that McManus could’ve delved into a bit more but that she just left hanging in the air instead. For example, she could’ve written more about the divide between the rich kids and the scholarship kids at the school, which was something she hinted at in the first few chapters. Or again, Tripp’s relationship with his mother, while being talked about a lot, wasn’t actually explored much in depth. Or Dexter and the way he’d treated his kids and his wife , and the impact that might’ve had on them. None of those things were given the attention they deserved, which made them fall flat and feel out of place a little.
Lastly, this is a bit of a detail, but I was kind of annoyed at all the author’s references to her other books. It was kind of cool at first, and I liked the idea that all her stories were set in the same universe. However, she apparently referenced every single one of her books - I saw a review that mentioned You'll Be the Death of Me, which I can’t vouch for since I haven’t read it yet, but I personally saw references to One of Us Is Lying, Two Can Keep a Secret, and The Cousins. It just got annoying, like she tried to be cheeky but tried too hard.
So overall, I found this book very average. While I was interested in the plot and did genuinely want to know what was going on, and I did find some moments to be quite funny, the characters were all just too severely underdeveloped. Plus, the plot was too all over the place, as if McManus had just written without really following any particular pattern. And I need someone to tell her that “romances are necessary in mystery novels” is not a hill she should be willing to die on.
First of all, the characters weren’t very interesting. The book was told from two POVs - Brynn, who moved back to town, and Tripp, her former best friend. After having gotten her dream internship - at Motive, a true-crime show -, Brynn was determined to solve a four-year-old case from her hometown: her old English teacher Mr. Larkin, who’d gotten murdered in the woods behind the school and had been found by Tripp and classmates Shane and Charlotte. While there was occasionally a shorter chapter that followed Tripp on the day of the murder, most of the story was set in present day.
There was nothing that drew me in about either character. Any depth that McManus attempted with them was abandoned way too soon. Sure, Tripp’s relationship with his incredibly shitty mother was shown, but then from a certain point onward, it didn’t really go anywhere anymore? And Brynn’s journalistic drive and her desperation to find her place in the world in the way the rest of her family did literally stopped being relevant at some point. And the further into solving the mystery she got, the less smart she acted.
Tripp, at the same time, didn’t make things better for me. He was so incredibly boring, I wanted to weep. A celebrity’s cardboard cutout would have felt more interesting to me than him. Plus, the way he’d treated Brynn four years ago pissed me off, and while it got explained and there was obviously a redemption arc, it came a bit too late in the story and only after a few false explanations that painted him in an even shittier light.
Even worse than the characters individually was the romance that McManus forced on me. Since this was the fourth book of hers I’d read, I knew that there would be a romance - I could smell it just by reading the synposis -, and I need her to explain to me why she always feels the need to put one into every single one of her books. She writes mysteries, for crying out loud. Does she assume teenagers would never read books without romances in them?
It’s annoying to begin with, but what made it worse was the fact that Brynn and Tripp had absolutely zero chemistry. They literally would’ve made so much more sense as friends than as a couple, even more so in the context of the plot. Every time Brynn waxed poetry about Tripp’s looks or the two of them made out, it just took me out of the moment. I wish I could read mysteries - especially YA ones - without having to see the actual intrigue take a backseat to a mediocre, boring straight couple that would be better off not dating. Brynn and Tripp read like the kind of couple that dates for like three months like they’d be together forever, and then high school ends and they never see each other again. There was no real connection, and considering they were literally friends growing up, that was quite the accomplishment.
But not only the main characters, but also the side characters lacked some serious development. Especially the side characters, actually. Even the ones who seemed like they should’ve been important to the plot - literally everyone from Shane and Charlotte to Tripp’s mother to even Mr. Larkin the murder victim himself - weren’t given enough attention. That also meant that sometimes, certain plot twists just made no sense. It would’ve been impossible to figure some of them out, and what’s the point of a mystery if you can’t even guess alongside the characters? For example,
Not only that, but character’s motivations were barely explained at all. There were some characters who - either from the beginning, like Charlotte with her obsession with Shane, or Mr. Larkin later in the book - would act in a way that felt incredibly inexplicable and confusing to me. And because you never before saw them act that way, nor were there any clues that might’ve made you understand, it felt very disingenuous from the author to me.
One thing that starts to piss me off about McManus, too, is how unimportant her queer characters often are, at least in books outside of One of Us Is Lying. I used to love that she made at least one character per book queer, because we have a right to exist in casual places in a story, too.
However, that warm feeling she used to give me vanished when I realised how irrelevant to the plot the characters usually were. For example, in “Nothing More to Tell”, there were two - Brynn’s sister Ellie, and her friend Mason. And while both of them showed up several times in the book, they weren’t developed very deeply or with much care - especially not Mason. It’s starting to feel more like an insult than a lovely gesture.
There were also a few too many characters. McManus didn’t seem to ever have heard that too many cooks spoil the broth. It would’ve been much better to have a few less but instead explore them better and write them with more personality - or at least a more multi-faceted personality -, instead of putting them into boxes (though from what I remember from One of Us Is Lying, she did it there too, so maybe she just has problems seeing people as more than just one descriptor).
Admittedly, I did laugh sometimes at some of the things the characters did or said. I mean, it was mainly just Al the dog and the dry way people talked to him that made me laugh, but still. It was a little bit fun in certain scenes.
So let’s move to the plot now. Thankfully, I liked that a bit more than the characters. It wasn’t incredible or mind-blowing, but it did have me hooked and intrigued, which is definitely kind of a requirement for a mystery novel, so I was pleased it at least accomplished that.
Like I mentioned above, some of the plot twists weren’t very easy to figure out - which was mainly because there weren’t enough clues to lead you to the right conclusion and not because the author was incredibly clever. And while I kind of liked who the eventual murderer was - and it did make sense to me that they did it -, the lack of an actual ending was extremely frustrating. While you could argue that that made it more realistic - after all, just because a teenage girl figures out who the killer was doesn’t mean they actually get arrested, because where’s the evidence? -, it is not something I appreciate in my thrillers and mysteries. Especially when the killer spent the entire book being a shitty, abusive person.
Plus, when there were several story lines that didn’t get wrapped up at all, it felt more like a pattern of lazy storytelling and less like a deliberate attempt to make a commentary about true crime. In fact, there was not a single part that properly ended.
I also felt like McManus put one red herring too many in the book. Brynn and Tripp suspected so many different people throughout the book that it became annoying every time Brynn came to the conclusion that that person couldn’t have been the killer. Especially since she sometimes did it almost intuitively - she looked at their faces, saw their reactions to her questions, and seemed to immediately just know that they couldn’t have done it. Because I guess no one would ever be capable of faking shock.
The plot didn’t really seem to know where it wanted to go either. That internship Brynn started at the beginning of the story? The reason she even re-immersed herself in Mr. Larkin’s murder and started spending time with Tripp again? Literally wasn’t even relevant for the majority of the book. Additionally, I kinda felt like when it came to the internship, a lot of disbelief needed to be suspended. You really want to tell me that this popular true-crime show would let a random teenage girl lead them to the next big story? And not only that, but the way she even got the internship in the first place was laughable. Realistically, they would’ve seen her email and immediately deleted it.
Like with the characters, the plot also lacked any kind of depth. There were several topics that McManus could’ve delved into a bit more but that she just left hanging in the air instead. For example, she could’ve written more about the divide between the rich kids and the scholarship kids at the school, which was something she hinted at in the first few chapters. Or again, Tripp’s relationship with his mother, while being talked about a lot, wasn’t actually explored much in depth. Or
Lastly, this is a bit of a detail, but I was kind of annoyed at all the author’s references to her other books. It was kind of cool at first, and I liked the idea that all her stories were set in the same universe. However, she apparently referenced every single one of her books - I saw a review that mentioned You'll Be the Death of Me, which I can’t vouch for since I haven’t read it yet, but I personally saw references to One of Us Is Lying, Two Can Keep a Secret, and The Cousins. It just got annoying, like she tried to be cheeky but tried too hard.
So overall, I found this book very average. While I was interested in the plot and did genuinely want to know what was going on, and I did find some moments to be quite funny, the characters were all just too severely underdeveloped. Plus, the plot was too all over the place, as if McManus had just written without really following any particular pattern. And I need someone to tell her that “romances are necessary in mystery novels” is not a hill she should be willing to die on.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Kidnapping, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
Moderate: Child abuse
Minor: Bullying, Abandonment, and Classism
capybooks's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Mental illness, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, and Alcohol
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical content, Car accident, and Classism
Minor: Toxic relationship and Toxic friendship
cateemma's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Murder
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Violence, and Classism