I'm going to start off by saying that I actually did enjoy this book, but a lot of it came from how I read it rather than the book itself. My friend and I, since One of Us Is Lying, have been reading McManus' books together. When we do this, we plan out set chapters to read each day, so we're staying on the same page and can discuss. This leads to a lot more theorizing, discussing, and suspense than usual, because we force ourselves to stop reading every few chapters, often on cliffhangers, and try to solve the mystery ourselves. Without that stopping, this book could probably have been read in a few hours in one sitting. However, because of our forced stops, suspense and tension was able to build in moments the book didn't have any, and as we were reading, we found the book itself to be creating very little of the build-up itself. So, the experience was enhanced by how we read it, but the book itself isn't necessarily to thank for that.

Additionally, I just found it a lot weaker than One of Us Is Lying. This may in part be due to how predictable McManus gets the more you read her works, as she seems to make the MCs question everyone and everything except the actual culprit. While the final, final twist did get me, I had pieced the entire rest of the story together by about halfway. Which isn't really a bad thing, foreshadowing is important and someone will always guess it, but I didn't necessarily guess because of the foreshadowing itself, but by knowing how McManus tends to reveal twists and hide suspicion, and it made this book feel cookie cutter. Additionally, I found the characters of her first book a lot more compelling, both the individuals and the relationships. To be honest,

Spoiler

I was not into Luis, a year out of college, dating Maeve, a high school junior, at all, and that set up made me super suspicious of him the entire time.

Additionally, while I like cameos of past characters, I hate when those characters instead become the focus of new books where they're supposed to be background. Nate and Bronwyn's relationship was just messed with too much in beginning in my opinion, and while this settles and is backgrounded as the plot progresses, it was quite frustrating in the opening scenes.

While I do think I'll keeping reading new releases by McManus, for now, I'm definitely going in less and less excited.