A review by bookishandlegal
One of Us Is Next by Karen M. McManus

dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Ehh, this was fine but it very much felt like a follow up book that was unnecessary. It took me a while to get oriented with the new characters and for almost half the book I didn’t even see what the thrilling part was and what the mystery we were supposed to be solving was. Like overarching was who was running the truth or dare game…but there wasn’t any underlying stakes or anything to that until halfway through. The impact on the 3 main characters also didn’t make sense for most of the book. Yeah, embarrassing secrets were coming out about them, but it wasn’t high stakes stuff like being accessed of murder…it was high school stuff. 

I did get used to the characters and came to like them and was interested in their stories. Maeve and Luis particularly was a fun thing to watch grow. Once I figured out the overarching mystery we were trying to solve I was more interested (but also annoyed because it took the characters forever to put two and two together and I figured out most of the twists well before they happened). After the “main twist” I thought the story dragged a bit and should have finished faster than it did, but I was surprised by the final twist at the end…didn’t see that coming at all. 

The full cast audio was good and having different narrators for the different chapter points of view worked really well. Overall a fine read, but I think if I hadn’t been reading on audio during a full day of driving I would have stopped reading this one. 
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