Book Review #96: You'll Be The Death of Me by Karen M. McManus

Every time I review a Karen M. McManus book I say how much I love her as an author. I pre-ordered this book as soon as it was announced (almost a year in advance) because I love her writing and stories so much.

Ivy, Mateo and Cal used to be best friends. When they run into each other after not speaking for years, they decide to ditch school and hang out like old times. But the trio soon discovers that another classmate is skipping school, and follow him to the scene of a murder. Can they discover their connections to the victim before their own secrets are revealed?

This wasn't my favourite of McManus's stories.

However, as always, I do love her writing. This is the fifth book of hers that I've read, and the writing style is so familiar that it's almost comforting.

It takes a little too long to actually get into the story - particularly because the book is quite short. There's a lot of time spent on the background of the characters, as opposed to just letting us figure things out along the way.

It also took me a while to warm to, understand or like the characters. But when I finally did warm to the characters, I started to enjoy the book a lot more.

And my enjoyment of the book came all of a sudden. I became invested in the story without realising, and was eager to get to the end.

There wasn't a lot of chemistry between the characters (even the ones that might be more than friends). It actually didn't feel like they were ever friends in the first place.

Speaking of chemistry, there is usually an element of romance in McManus's books. In this one, the romance comes out of nowhere, doesn't really develop, and just kind of... starts existing. 

There is so much going on with this story that the mystery behind the murder kind of takes a back seat for a while - and as a result, I didn't care for a long time who the murderer actually was.

The story only really gets going, and gets exciting, in the last 100 pages, when everything comes to a head.

The reveal was a bit lacklustre - and not just the reveal of the murderer. There were many secrets uncovered throughout the story, and most of them were quite mediocre.

The epilogue/ending section of the book felt too long - the middle of the story, where everything happens, could have been fleshed out a lot more.

Overall, I found the book a bit disappointing. The story itself is fine, and somewhat entertaining. But for me, there were about 80 pages of entertainment out of 325, which is much less than I'd want from a thriller.

2/5 stars