Review: One by One

One by One by Freida McFadden
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
This book sounded promising, but quickly let me down. When a group of friends head out to relax at a Colorado resort, things go bad pretty quickly--is someone picking them off one by one?
Most of the characters were unlikeable, and from the get-go, they did some pretty questionable things...Who agrees to go stay at an isolated resort based on the recommendation of someone they've never met, without even googling it? Who paid for it? Weird. And good grief, Noah was rude to Claire...geez! I know she probably "deserved it," but who would put up with that? Then the whole "getting lost in the woods" situation was pretty unbelievable. They just drove A MINI-VAN onto an overgrown trail? What? And then decided to get out and walk along this ridiculous trail when the mini-van broke down? And within just a few hours a whole "Lord of the Flies" scenario develops, with a complete chaotic devolving of common humanity? I kept thinking, "You all have been 'lost' in the woods for literally less than 24 hours and you're all acting like it's the apocalypse and you're about to have to cannibalize your friends, paint your faces with blood, and drink your own urine. GROW UP!" Once Lindsay got left in the woods, the story totally lost any believability it might have been clinging on to. I saw the "twist" literally as soon as it happened--waaaay too obvious. And I figured out who "Anonymous" was pretty early on, as well. This book was full of plot holes and required a great deal of suspension of belief. (I am sorry, but you can see if sandwich bread has been sitting out for a while just by feeling it...bread goes stale before it starts to "rot." And what kind of Swiss Army knife was that? Certainly not the kind I've carried in my purse for the last 2 decades!)
I was not impressed by this book at all. Wouldn't recommend it, and will not read anything else by this author.

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