One by One by Freida McFadden on November 27, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Thrillers / Crime, Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 347
Format: Audiobook
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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.
This standalone novel didn’t quite live up to her other works. The reasoning behind the villain’s actions and the entire scheme of his/her dangerous plan made me roll my eyes and question, “Is that really it?” The characters in the book also fall flat. We have two points of view: Claire, who is not particularly likable, and an anonymous character who is the perpetrator and possibly a psychopath, albeit with some obvious reasons. All the characters behave as if they’re in a B-list movie, with stereotyped backgrounds and meaningless dialogues, until their time is up and one of them disappears from sight. None of them reacts clearly to their situation, instead acting like half-witted individuals, oblivious to the danger they’re in and clueless about how to save themselves.
Three stars for effort and the fact that it was mercifully short. I found it to be tedious and redundant, populated with characters whom I disliked from the very beginning. The story was short on detail, save the three or four specifics that were repeated ad nauseam—Claire is unhappy, Claire loves her children, Michelle is a cold fish, Warner is handsome. Over. And over. And over.