Never in my wildest dreams I expected to be approved of an ARC by Freida. Well, it’s because I just started reading books a year ago and thought it would be hard since she’s one of the well-known thriller authors out there. Thank you for this opportunity and so happy that I overlooked by emails and noticed late that I received a copy.

This was a good book, a bit repetitive. I was intrigued by Claire’s character and her relationship. Took me a bit longer to read because the middle wasn’t so catchy but I’m glad I stuck with it plot twist at the end was worth it. It was a good read overall.

A super quick read, but an extremely silly story. The true definition of a trashy thriller. Six people on the way to a couples trip get lost. They abandon their broken down car and try to reach the inn on foot. One by one…they start to die. Common sense was abandoned when creating these characters lol. I’m almost embarrassed I read this book.

Two stars ⭐️⭐️

Freida has become one of my new favorite authors of 2024! I can't believe I've never read her books before this year but I'm now completely hooked! I SPED through this series and ate it up! there were so many twists and turns and had me gripping my seat guessing the next step!

I thoroughly enjoy reading all of McFadden’s books because they’re fast paced, never a dull moment and she always wraps up every ending in a perfect bow! Thanks again for another great thriller!

One of my new all time favorites from Freida! This book took so many twists and turns I never saw coming. It was a very fast-paced read and it drew you in from the first page. This book honestly kept me guessing from page one. You never quite knew who to trust, even though the last page. Would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a good thriller!

Thank you Netgalley for access to One by One in exchange for an honest review.

4/5⭐️

I really enjoyed this Freida read. I definitely thought that I had it figured out this time, but of course, I should’ve known that I will NEVER know Freida’s twists and turns! She’s too good of a writer! There were a few questionable plot lines which is what has this book sitting at a 4 ⭐️ but overall it was really enjoyable and a fun page turner!

“Thanks to my mom, I know everything there is to know about poison berries.”

I’ve said before how I like the outlandishness of McFadden’s books, and this still rings true here. This one follows a familiar story arc with a group of friends getting lost on their way to a retreat in the woods.

What could go wrong?

One by one people mysteriously turn up dead, in what has a very Hunger Games-esque feel. Though this one wrapped up a little too quickly and was more ridiculous than some of her others, I still ended up reading this in a single day.

This was not one of my favorite McFadden books but the last 4-5 chapters were worth the slow start. Although it starts slow about half way thru it picks up and the ending is full of twists. Another great read for McFadden!

Three couples are road-tripping to this resort for a week full of hot tubs and relaxation! Sounds perfect, right? Well, the van breaks down in the middle of the woods so they have to hike to the hotel. But then the compass isn't working. And no one has cell service. And they start to disappear one by one.

Freida does it again! I really enjoyed this book, but it wasn't as gripping as her more recent books. The start was definitely slower, but the ending made up for it! I was searching for the plot twist, but it still caught me completely off guard! It's told from the perspective of Claire, and an anonymous narrator who is the reason everything has gone wrong and everyone is disappearing. The question of WHO had me guessing until the big reveal.

The characters in this one fell flat, and I wasn't really upset when they started to disappear/die "one by one". Short, fast-paced chapters were the saving grace for this book! Despite its flaws, I still couldn't put it down once I made it about 1/2 through. And I would still recommend it!

When I was about 30% through this book, I started thinking, "When will people start dying?" I know it sounds really bad and I swear I'm not a terrible person, but really, I picked a book called 'One by One', where the blurb told me that people are going to die one by one, so I think that was a fair expectation on my part?

Anyway, my issue with this book was that the characters were really unlikable. Especially Claire, who was one of the two POV characters in the book (the other being 'Anonymous'), and she was just... annoying. We spent the bulk of the time reading about how miserable she was being with her husband, how she hated her husband and how he must have hated her too, and how she was totally going to end her marriage after this trip. After a while I just find her to be really whiny and tiresome, and worse, she wasn't the only one. Warner, this drop-dead gorgeous surgeon was giant walking red flag, and Michelle was such a stuffy and uptight lawyer, I wondered why she was even on this trip.

Hey, here's a thought: maybe the serial killer was motivated to off everyone because they seemed very determined to be irritating, in ways that feel absolutely intentional?

I kind of think that a story as such requires us to emphatize with the characters and actually care for them. Unfortunately the opposite is true here: none of them feel substantial as characters, that it's hard to feel any sort of anxiety over their safety. Oh, another person is missing? Let's move on.

The writing for the characters was certainly a weak point for this book. The characters are so one dimensional. Now for a thriller like this, I don't expect much character development or introspection, but tou're never allowed to forget that Warner is great-looking! Or that Michelle is a divorce lawyer who is also a b*tch. Or that Lindsay is beautiful. And of course, Claire hated her husband... Like, I get it, the first 3 times you mentioned these aspects of the characters!

It certainly didn't help that the reveals don't make sense. The links between one plot point to another is so tenuous that the whole thing falls apart if you as much as glance in that direction.

**spoiler alert**
There was a plot detail where a magnet hidden in Noah's pocket was used to wreck havoc with the compass. Cool, except that it wouldn't work at all; if the magnet moved or changed direction with respect to the compass at any point in time, the whole thing fails. Not to mention that the inverse square law, which magnets obey, where... okay, I shall stop it with the Physics explanations, but I'm just saying that the idea was not even physically possible.

Then there was no explanations on how they managed to get Michelle away from the group. Or how when Warner disappeared, there was a tonne of blood. After the reveal, it made me wonder, where did all that blood come from? Did Lindsay and Warner just carry pails of blood around for that misdirection? I was just confused, and utterly not convinced with the explanations.

And don't even get me started on how Lindsay faked her death. Really? No one else checked her pulse? CPR is a brutal, desperate process where you might end up breaking the victim's ribs, and you're telling me that Warner could fake it without seriously injuring Lindsay, and still look real enough to convince the rest? What are they, Oscar winners? Like sure, maybe that works, but it still feels like such a flimsy plot point.
**end of spoilers**

Concluding remarks (non-spoiler):
At the end of the day, I was motivated to keep reading because I wanted to know who the 'Anonymous' POV character and the killer is. For that at least, this book works; I cared enough about the answers to just keep going. The good thing is that the pacing of the book improved once the first death happened and it was a very fast read from then onwards, and so you can see why I was waiting for that moment.

This was so far the best book I read by Freida McFadden. When things started to get clearer I was shocked I didn’t expect all the things that happened. While you read you think that you’ve got an inkling of who done it but you discover that you are mistaken and what you thought is far away from what actually happened. Even at the end things were still complicated. All along I thought of everyone to be the murderer except the actual murderer I didn’t see that. That was brilliant. I ate the last 100 pages and couldn’t stop reading.

This is my first book by the author and it did not disappoint. This is actually quite a quick read, which may be due to short chapters. The book starts off a bit hard to read, simply because of the well written hatred between Claire and her husband Noah. We are introduced to two other couples, one of which Claire is cheating on Noah with. As they head to an inn, they begin dying off one by one (rollll credits), lost in the woods. Among them is a killer. I've read similar books to this one -a group goes into the woods and start being killed off one by one. It's not an original concept at all, there is no originality here or something that makes it stand out from the others that I have read (which is minus one star). However, it is still a great book, entertaining, and had me itching to read it. Highly recommend if thrillers and whodunnits are your genre!

While I read this in maybe 5 hours, it was a bit of a let down. It started off great but once they were all lost in the woods it just got kinda..annoying? The twists was great though. Didn't see it being the person it was at all.

3.5/5 ⭐️

A couples’ weekend away turns murderous as people keep dying one by one on a trip in the woods.

I liked this one fine, but I think it took too long to really build the suspense. Then at the end, it seemed like we were going to get another twist, but then that was undone in the epilogue. It was also hard to cheer for Claire as a protagonist. Fine thriller, but lacking the true suspense I really wanted.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fun quick read!
A great quick read with a few twists to keep you guessing till the end. Fast paced and short chapters to keep you reading just another chapter!
The characters seemed simplistic and the plot a little far fetched, but overall I enjoyed reading ‘One by One’. I’d recommend for a quick fun read.

This is honestly the first Freida McFadden book I've read in a while where I didn't think the twist was completely out of left field. I feel like sometimes she uses cheap tricks to throw you off the scent and the twist makes no sense to the plot, but this fit into the book nicely, and while I had my theories, nothing panned out exactly the way I thought it would.

Six friends are headed out for a couples retreat at a secluded inn. For Claire, she's somewhat hopeful it could fix her marriage, somewhat hopeful she won't have to see her husband the entire week. When their car breaks down in the woods, the crew sets out for what they expect to be a two mile hike to the inn. But two miles turns into two nights, and slowly but surely six becomes five, then four, then three. It's every man for themselves in the wilderness - and how many will be left by the time someone realizes they're missing?

This is a SHORT read (I started it at 6 and was done before 9!) so if you need just a quick little palate cleanser, this is perfect. Fast paced, kept my attention, exactly what I was in the mood for and needed!

I don't think anything will ever compare to how mind blown I was by the Housemaid, but this is still a solid read with a decent twist at the end.

This book kept me guessing and, in true Freida fashion, shocked me up until the last page! Her story lines and characters are so engrossing and I love knowing that I can’t trust any one in her books.

I absolutely adored this book! It was such a twisty and fun ride-- no surprise for Freida McFadden! Her writing style makes all of her books impossible to put down, and this was no different! SO good!

I thought this was a good book, but not my favorite of Freida's! It had some twists and turns, and I honestly didn't know who the bad guy was until the very end. I had a hard time liking the characters, and that was probably my biggest problem. I didn't really care when they died because I wasn't invested in them so it was a bit minotinous. Overall I give it 3.5 stars because I did read it fast and it kept me guessing until the end! Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!