The Cousins
Ratings113
Average rating3.6
Three cousins have been asked to come help at resort that is currently owned by their grandmother. However, the last time they all saw each was during the childhood.
Milly, Aubrey, and Jonah have never met their met their grandmother, as she disinherited their parents before they were born. Having each receiving a personal letter from their grandmother to work on at the family resort for the summer, curiosity get to the better of them and well as questions as to why they have never properly met & why their grandmother disowned their parents.
I really enjoyed the first couple of chapters as we find out about each cousin, what they are like, and who they are as person.
The cousins were not too thrilled at first to be going back to resort but Milly and Aubrey had sort of accepted it and Jonah was still annoyed as he had been accepted into a Science Camp for the summer which was apparently very hard to go into.
Once they arrived at the resort and start working, Doland, wants to meet them. Donald offered the three another job with better pay, however, he is wanting them off the resort. We learn quiet early on that Jonah is an imposter. While their cousin Jonah (JT) is at camp he sent another Jonah in his place, which Millie spotted by putting clues together from when they first boarded the ship.
The plot twist keeps coming we soon learn that the bartender is indeed their uncle and learn that it was him that contacted them. Jonah kept stringing them along as he wanted to pretty much destroy the Story family name as JT dad (Milly and Aubrey's uncle) made Jonah family bankrupt. And of course, this is when the real JT show his face as a picture got posted of Jonah during an event on the island.
And the plot twist keep coming when the pieces are put together, it is revealed that their grandmother isn't who she says she is. Their grandmother had passed away 24 years ago and her good friend Theresa took her place and acted as their grandmother as she wanted revenge on the Story family for the death of her son.
this book took a bit to get into which is why its just a 4 but all the twists shocked me and overall a good thriller and id recommended i really love this author's writing style.
Me ha encantado, no me esperaba que el final fuera así, la verdad. Pero me ha gustado mucho.
Alkuun ärsyttävä ja tylsä YA-trilleri parani loppua kohden aika mielenkiintoiseksi tarinaksi.
Alkuasetelmat ovat mielestäni tällä kirjailijalla aina hallussa, samoin nyt. Kolme serkkua menee kesäksi töihin etääntyneen isoäitinsä luokse ja samalla he selvittävät aikoja sitten tapahtunutta mysteeriä.
Hahmot ja tarina eivät alkuun uponneet minuun ollenkaan. Varsinkin kuunnellessa oli vaikea pitää mielenkiintoa yllä ja joskus oli vaikea pysyä kärryillä kuka minä-kertojista oli tällä kertaa äänessä.
Puolen välin jälkeen, kun mysteerit oikeasti alkoivat tulla esille ja hiljalleen paljastua, aloin oikeasti keskittyä tarinaan ja jopa pitää siitä.
I've never read a contemporary YA mystery-thriller before, and I was curious about this one. It definitely kept my attention, but I also don't feel eager to continue reading the genre. Still, it was a real page-turner. I'm definitely not the target audience for this book, though, so please take my review in that spirit. I listened to the audiobook and it was very well done, with several different narrators.
About halfway through, I had a guess about the ending which turned out to be totally wrong. So there were some good red herrings, or good to me, anyway. The ending was satisfying, although I didn't predict much about it. I always felt like there was enough detail to make things believable.
There was not a ton of depth to any of the three cousins, but that's okay, because it's more of a plot-driven book. There are also chapters from the PoV of Millie's mother as a teenager. Because of the nature of the book, these kids trying to figure out what happened when their parents were young, her chapters were the ones I was most interested in. So those were the most gripping, but she was the least interesting character of the four. Also, all the leads are hetero but there's an important gay side character who turns out to be pretty saintly, and I don't know, but his saintliness just hit me wrong.
Overall, my experience was somewhere between “okay” and “good.” Perfectly fine but nothing I'm excited about. I wanted something with a fast pace, and this book delivered on that front.
Entretenido e ingenioso, pero ha tal vez he echado en falta un poco más de misterio o un secreto algo más jugoso. Por lo demás, buena narración.
Miley, Aubrey, and Jonah Story are cousins and have only met a couple if times when they were very young. They really don't know each other and haven't kept in touch because of their parents. And up until now have never met their grandmother until receiving a letter inviting them to work on her island. They are forced to go by their parents who are hoping to get back into the will, they had be removed from the will when they were younger.
Hoping to find out what happened between their parents and meet their grandmother, they head to the island.
Several good twists and turns. I really enjoyed this one.
The plot was intriguing and well thought, but the characters as teenagers were hard to believe.
3.5
“But she knew what the problem was with her mother's heart: it was broken.”
I wasn't expecting to enjoy this coz I wasn't a huge fan of one of us is lying, but this one was just amazing!!!
It wasn't suspenseful or anything just really interesting!!
The ending was so sad but at the same time weirdly happy too.
Loved the chapters which alternated between the past and present, loved the multiple povs.
Overall a really enjoyable read.
Fans of her previous works will find this wholly satisfying. I appreciated the multi-generational mystery, the setting, and the characters.
Y'know, this was just a solid fun time. Nothing crazy, nothing amazing, but enjoyable!
3.75/5 stars
Karen M. McManus books make me never want to trust anyone ever again.
i mean...i liked it and i didn't??? it did follow a lot of typical thriller tropes as KMM's books often do and I didn't find this particularly thrilling but it was still good. it won't go down in history as the best thriller to ever grace the ya genre though and the big reveal was really underwhelming. but i have to say i do like KMM's humor a lot. and the characters were cute. it is definitely unconventional in its own way. i really didn't see the point of the allison pov & think that it took away from the story but if you like character focused thrillers (aubrey was my favorite), you can give this a try. don't really have a lot to say about this one other than that.
i mean...i liked it and i didn't??? it did follow a lot of typical thriller tropes as KMM's books often do and I didn't find this particularly thrilling but it was still good. it won't go down in history as the best thriller to ever grace the ya genre though and the big reveal was really underwhelming. but i have to say i do like KMM's humor a lot. and the characters were cute. it is definitely unconventional in its own way. i really didn't see the point of the allison pov & think that it took away from the story but if you like character focused thrillers (aubrey was my favorite), you can give this a try. don't really have a lot to say about this one other than that.??
3.5 stars.
The mystery was good, the characters not so much. While I liked the three cousins, their parents were horrible. And while we got the backstory for all three, I never felt connected or even remotely interested in any of them. All I kept thinking was how emotionless everyone was and how badly they treated their kids.
Everyone should just go to therapy and talk about the parent issues they have.
I feel like the first book ‘One of Us Lying' was the pinnacle. All the others keep falling a little short.
I really enjoy this author's books, and again, I enjoyed this one quite a lot. Yes, the “twist” was a bit far-fetched and implausible, and the ending was a bit rushed. However, it kept me hooked and turning the pages, so that's a win in my book!
No family is ever perfect, but there are some that seem more dysfunctional than others. Cue, the Story family. Some family secrets are fun, some are deadly. The Story cousins are about to find out what is going in their not-so-perfect family and discover that maybe they should have left the past alone. Each of their parents was disinherited with a single sentence from their mother, and while they are all curious as to why that was, it might have been better to walk away - even with all the money at stake.
My Thoughts:
Wow, this was a book that was hard to put down! It is one that you are not going to want to start at night when you have to be up early the next morning. I am going to admit, I was stuck in the book until it was finished, and paid for it the next day. When you add in a family secret, a little murder, and a lot of what could go wrong, you are left with a book that is going to keep you enthralled until the end!
As I was reading through this book, I had a few places where I felt that maybe teenagers would not react that way (but it has been a while since I was a teenager). I did enjoy the overall tone and storyline (no pun intended), as we worked through the mystery surrounding the Story family. This is one that you need to add to your MUST-READ LIST, and do it soon! This book will have you wishing for just a bit more at the end!
Milly's, Aubrey's, and Jonah's parents were disinherited from their wealthy and aloof mother almost twenty years ago; now, she wants to get to know her grandchildren. Spending the summer working on their grandmother's island resort wasn't any of their ideal summer vacations, but the three of them soon start to unravel the intricate mysteries that have been surrounding their family for decades.
Fast-paced and full of twists and turns, this novel definitely relied too much on suspension of disbelief for this jaded old gal, but I will have no reservations about recommending it to teens and other fans of mystery thrillers.