Freida McFadden has become one of those authors I go to for an easy read. Her books are all fairly similar in style: female lead, quick, fast-paced chapters and a plot that reveals more about the characters’ past as it progresses. One by One has most of these but just doesn’t seem to hit the same note with me as her other books did.
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In One by One a group of friends decide to go on a trip to a remote cabin but along the way get lost in some woods and then proceed to spend the next 200 odd pages scrambling around htese woods as, “one by one” they’re picked off by a mysterious killer.
One by One plot – 3/5
Without a doubt, this is the weakest plot I’ve read from McFadden so far. As I not so subtely suggested above, this is a book about a group of friends who all don’t really like each other stumbling around a woods after losing signal and not being able to find the hotel they’d all intended to stay at.
One of my many quarms with this was that it felt unrealistic – there are other ways of using navigation now that don’t require signal. Another of my quarms was that as a result of this being just about the only thing that happens, as the reader you feel like you’re not progressing and nothing is really happening. And then another quarm of mine was that the twists that do inevitably come seem very tacked on and then there’s another one at the end that just left me outright confused and made no sense.
Its one saving grace was that there’s a tandem story going on at the same time of another charcter who we presume is one of those involved in the current day story hich is mildly interesting. Right up until it’s not and makes very little sense.
One by One characters – 3.25/5
To add to the simply uninteresting plot and confusing twists, the characters you have to spend your time with seem to utterly detest one another too. Our main character Claire is not in a good place with her husband and the friends she’s going on holiday with she doesn’t seem particularly chummy with.
To top it all off, the interactions she has with these people don’t seem particularly engaging either. There’s a sort of love affair going on (it’s revealed very early on) but at no point did I ever really feel like it continued. It was mentioned and then not really acted upon, so felt a waste of an addition to the characters.
One by One final rating – 3.25/5
One by One is without a doubt the worst of McFadden’s that I’ve read so far. The plot was half-baked, the twists twisted too much and left me asking more than they answered and the characters all seemed to detest one another which made me detest them. McFadden’s books are usually a light reprieve from more challenging novels for me but this one just left me feeling a bit like I’d wasted my time which is something I very rarely feel with books. If you’re a McFadden die-hard, don’t miss this book but I’d suggest everyone go into it with caution.
