There's something about a book that promises bodies in the woods, a group unraveling thread by thread, the slow inevitability of violence. One by One delivers exactly what its title threatens—six people walk into the wilderness, and not all of them walk out. The premise is familiar territory, well-trodden ground, but sometimes familiar feels like coming home to a house you know is haunted and going inside anyway.
The cast: Claire and Noah, a marriage crumbling like old bread, held together by nothing but the pretense of still being in love. Claire's cheating—of course she is, you can smell it on her from page one, the way her internal monologue circles around Noah's failures like a vulture waiting for permission to feed. Jack and Michelle, the friend and his wife who doesn't want to be there, whose presence feels like an obligation fulfilled through gritted teeth. Lindsay and Warner, best friend and new boyfriend, that honeymoon phase still sticky on their skin, everything still possible between them.
Their car breaks down while on the way to a dream get away at some fancy resort and into the woods they go. One by one, as promised, they fall.
McFadden knows how to keep you turning pages. I'll give her that. The pacing moves like water finding its way downhill—fast, inevitable, pulling you along even when you're not sure you want to go. I read it in a day because I couldn't not read it, because once the first body drops you need to know who's next, who's doing this, why. The killer's identity stayed hidden until the reveal, which is more than I can say for most thrillers that show their hand too early and expect you to pretend you can't see the cards.
What I appreciated: the dual perspective structure. We get Claire, unreliable and self-absorbed, and we get the killer—anonymous, gender-obscured, their backstory doled out in fragments that tell us everything and nothing. McFadden resists the urge to spoil her own mystery, keeps the killer's identity locked tight until the characters themselves discover it. There's mercy in that. Nothing ruins a thriller faster than an author who thinks the reader needs to feel superior to the people dying on the page.
But here's where it falters, where the whole thing starts to come apart like wet paper: the ending. Abrupt doesn't even cover it. It felt like McFadden got tired, or ran out of pages, or simply didn't know how to land the plane she'd been flying. The reveal happens and then—nothing. No time to sit with it, to understand it, to feel the weight of what we've learned. Just a quick bow, curtain drop, thank you for coming. I closed the book feeling cheated, like I'd been promised a meal and got an appetizer instead.
And honestly? The ending didn't quite make sense. Not in the way where you're meant to piece it together yourself, but in the way where the logic doesn't hold water if you think about it for more than thirty seconds. The motivations felt thin. The execution (pun intended) felt rushed. It's like she knew where she wanted to end up but couldn't figure out how to get there cleanly, so she just... jumped.
The writing itself is functional but forgettable. The characters slot neatly into their designated roles—Claire the insecure wife, Noah the insecure asshole husband, Jack the pushover protector, Michelle the domineering presence, Lindsay the wild child, Warner the mysterious attractive ego. They're types more than people, which makes it hard to care when they start dropping. I found myself unmoved by the body count. They were all kind of irritating and definitely were not people I'd personally choose for friends. I didn't think they deserved to die, but I also didn't mourn them much when they did.
The gender dynamics grated. The way the men talked to the women, the way Claire's cheating was telegraphed from a mile away (unhappy wife in toxic marriage? Of course she's seeking comfort elsewhere). It's not inaccurate to how some people behave, but it felt lazy. Cliché dressed up as realism.
Still, I finished it in a day. Still, I wanted to know whodunit. Still, for most of its runtime, One by One did exactly what it needed to do—kept me guessing, kept me reading, kept me in that delicious state of not-quite-knowing.
It's a weekend read. A book to consume and forget. Fun in the moment, unsatisfying in retrospect. Like eating candy when you wanted a meal—sweet going down, but it doesn't stay with you.
My Rating: 3.5 / 5 stars for a thriller that almost stuck the landing but stumbled at the finish line. For pacing that moves like a river until it hits a dam. For a mystery that kept me hooked until the answer disappointed me.
If you've got a free Saturday and a need for something quick and bloody, you could do worse. Just don't expect the ending to earn what came before it.