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

4.0

The sequel to a great murder mystery. A couple of friends and I buddy read the first book and when this second one came out; we couldn’t wait to read it together.

The book takes place 18 months after the events of the first book. We follow 3 different main characters. The sister of Bronwyn, Meave. Her best friend who she also dated Knox and Phoebe who is a waiter at the local restaurant. They’re all juniors of the Baywinn High School and after things settle down after the whole Simon affair things are pretty quiet. That’s until someone new steps up and introduces a new type of game in school. Truth or dare, Truth and one of your most revealing secrets gets out, dare and you have to fulfill an assignment. Who is behind all this and what are the connections after a dare turns deathly?

I enjoyed myself. This is a very easy and entertaining read. I enjoyed the first book and really liked how the plot twist was thought out. I was expecting the same twists and well thought out plots that all come together in the end. The author didn’t let me down. She writes characters that are very different from one another with enough backstory to relate to them. All of them were pretty likeable and had somewhat of flaws that were interesting. The way the characters are written made it hard for me to picture any of them being the master mind. That’s way in the second half when the plot suddenly gets switched to “is it one of the three?” I did not really believe it. The side characters were a lot of fun. The main selling point of a book like this is figuring out who is behind it all. In my opinion the side characters are what really selling that. You constantly have to think if this or that person is involved. The ending was well done. It wasn’t the plot twist that I was expecting as I had figured it out about halfway through. The twist after that was very well done and I could not believe what had happened in a good way.

If you enjoyed the first book, I can’t recommend this enough. It’s fun to spend time with familiar characters and discover who’s behind the deathly game.