One of us is next – Karen M. McManus

Now this is the sequel to One of Us is Lying which I really enjoyed, you can read my review here. I had high hopes for this book.

The book in short
Come on, Bayview, you know you’ve missed this.
A ton of copycat gossip apps have popped up since Simon died, but in the year since the Bayview four were cleared of his shocking death, no one’s been able to fill the gossip void quite like he could. The problem is no one has the facts.
Until now.
This time it’s not an app, though—it’s a game.
Truth or Dare.

Phoebe’s the first target. If you choose not to play, it’s a truth. And hers is dark.
Then comes Maeve and she should know better—always choose the dare.
But by the time Knox is about to be tagged, things have gotten dangerous. The dares have become deadly, and if Maeve learned anything from Bronwyn last year, it’s that they can’t count on the police for help. Or protection.
Simon’s gone, but someone’s determined to keep his legacy at Bayview High alive. And this time, there’s a whole new set of rules.
I found this information here.

What did I think about the book?
If this is your favourite book you might want to stop reading right here. I thought it was really bad. I only enjoyed the last 100 or so pages. It felt like such a choir. We are back at Bayview but follow people we either haven’t met or people we have known about but aren’t that familiar with.

I’m not too fond of truth or dare to begin with, it is straight-up bullying in this book. We did have bullying in the first book, but it felt a bit different because we had other things to worry about, like the murder of the person who was spreading the gossip. With this one though, I didn’t like we were in the middle of it. It felt very childish while also life ruining. It didn’t enjoy this major plot-line in the story.

Maeve decides she does not want to play truth or dare and Knox who had nothing to do with this whole scenario actually told Meave to text back. Then his secret gets out resulting in him getting severely bullied in a school with a zero-tolerance policy for something she did. How he can ever be nice to her again says a lot about his character.

There is this b-plot about Maeve having had cancer in the past and she is a bit insecure about her remission status because she is having certain symptoms. Now I find it odd that she does not have regular blood work even on a yearly basis. I find that whole storyline quit upsetting and I don’t really want to read that.

It feels like a bit of a choir to read it, and I was thinking about DNF’ing it, even though I actually never do. I don;t think this is my type of story and this is also fine.

This book feels like suddenly there is a bomb (because there is), it’s so unrealistic that it sort of becomes fun. I did enjoy it a little bit by the end when we figured all of it out but then we got to the ending and it took a nose dive. It became enjoyable enough to keep going and finish the book which I did.

However the ending was really over the top, it made me feel some type of way I cannot really describe. I thought that the story overall wasn’t great but the implication of the end rubbed me the wrong way and truthfully it put me off the whole book.

I have one more book left in my book box and I think that is it for me. I am tapping out of reading this author. It is a real shame because the first book was such a hit. I might just not vibe with the storylines and that is fine not every book has to work for you. The book was in theme and writing style similar to the other two so if you really loved those this is a great one to pick up.