One by One by Freida McFadden

This is my first Freida McFadden book but I’ve been seeing her books everywhere recently so decided to pick one up. This was a short thriller that was entertaining and had a couple of good twists, so overall I enjoyed it. However, since it was so short I felt like there were parts that were lacking and thus made it not as great as it could have been.

The point of view for this story is told by two different people. The first, “Anonymous”, is identified as our killer right away. We then receive a few chapters from Anonymous throughout the story to add small tidbits of his/her life and thus makes you begin assuming who the killer truly is. But each chapter points to a different character as the possible culprit.

The second point of view and our main narrator is Claire Matchett. She is going on a week long vacation with her husband and their friends, 3 couples, and Claire is excited to get away from everything and possibly figure out what to do with her failing marriage. We quickly meet the other characters and although we receive a couple scenes from their past, I didn’t feel like these characters were well-developed. None of them seemed to have a very specific voice and some of the reactions were unrealistic and made them full 1-dimensional. This made some of the moments that should be terrifying feel anticlimactic.

I did enjoy the twists though. I actually did not guess who the killer was, and then another little wrench was thrown in at the end that I thought was clever and added a bit of a “dun, dun, dun” feeling. So this made up for the fact I wasn’t that interested in any of the characters and was bored a few times during the main storyline.

Thank you to NetGalley as I did receive a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: 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.