One by One by Freida McFadden
EXCERPT: PROLOGUE – ANONYMOUS There will be six of us. Six adults. Stuffed into a six-person minivan like sardines, with all the luggage we felt we couldn’t possibly live without during our vacation at a swanky luxury inn. Our reservation is for six days. Six days of hiking and hot tubs. Six days away from civilization. My mother was a religious woman. That’s how I know that on the sixth day, both man and serpent were created. You know – the snake that eventually convinced Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and got them kicked out of the Garden of Eden forever? That’s why the number six represents both man and the evil that weakens him. In Revelation, 666 is the number of the devil. The sixth commandment is thou shalt not kill. Six is not a nice number. I’m not religious. I don’t go to church. I don’t believe in a higher power. Six is just like any other number to me. But I know that every single one of these six people has a secret they don’t want anyone to know. I can tell you my secret right now: At the end of this week, only one of us will make it home alive.
ABOUT ‘ONE BY ONE’: One by one, they will get what they deserve…
A night spent sleeping on dirt and leaves is not how Claire Matchett expected to spend her vacation.
She thought this would be a break from the stresses of work and raising her young children. A chance to repair her damaged marriage. A week of hiking and hot tubs with two other couple friends. It sounded like heaven.
Then Claire’s minivan breaks down on a lonely dirt road. With no cell reception, the group has no choice but to hike the rest of the way to their hotel. But it turns out the woods aren’t as easy to navigate as they thought.
Hours later, they are lost. Hopelessly lost.
And as they navigate deeper into the woods, the members of their party are struck down mysteriously one by one. Has a wild animal been hunting them? Or is the hunter one of them?
But as more time passes, one thing becomes clear:
Only one of them will return home alive.
MY THOUGHTS: Wow! Talk about intense! This kept me enthralled from beginning to end, and it was a one sitting read!
Claire is the main narrator with occasional insertions from ‘Anonymous’. Try as I might, I couldn’t guess who Anonymous was. Was it one of the group? Or was someone following them? Why couldn’t they find this luxury hotel which should have, let’s face it, been clearly signposted? Why did the reasonably new van break down? And why didn’t they, following the first death, just head back to the van and sit on the horn until someone came looking for them? Yeah, okay – it’s easy to be completely sensible when you’re sitting on the deck in a comfy chair reading; but put yourself in their place . . .
Tension packed, thrilling and definitely recommended.
.4
#OneByOneFreidaMcFadden #NetGalley
THE AUTHOR: Freida McFadden is a practicing physician specializing in brain injury who lives with her family and black cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking the ocean, with staircases that creak and moan with each step, and nobody could hear you if you scream. Unless you scream really loudly, maybe.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of One by One by Freida McFadden for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
