“One by One” follows a married mother of two, Claire, going off to the woods with her husband, his best friend from college, that man’s wife, and her best friend Lindsay, and her new boyfriend. Claire is looking forward to this trip because she plans on finally telling her husband that she wants a divorce. When the group of six gets stuck in the woods on their way to the inn they were going to stay at and then one of their members dies, Claire starts to get scared that it seems as if someone is picking off their group one at at time. We also get an unnamed person telling us about their childhood in between Claire’s chapters and you realize this person is the one that is focused on hurting this group.
Well if you want to read a thriller set in the woods where people are getting killed every other day, this is the book for you. I honestly liked this. For once to me, McFadden did not telegraph who was doing what and why. I liked the twists we got at the end.
Claire is a bit hard to like because she reveals something pretty early on, but I ended up rooting for her and at least some of the other members of the party to make it out alive. The other characters we get to know the most honestly are Claire’s husband Noah. And Noah’s best friend Jack. Claire and Noah’s marriage has hit the skids for a lot of reasons, but most of them are understandable.
The plot though a homage to “And Then There Were None” was pretty fun, but McFadden put her own spin on things. The flow of the story started off pretty slow at first, but then everything picked up. I have said before her books are like chocolate. You pretty much can read them and feel mostly satisfied.
I read this for “CBR17bingo” “O” square.