Review:
Mackenzie plans to enjoy her time with her friends at Josh's cabin this weekend, even if Josh himself disgusts her. The group is joined by Josh's brother, Blake, who Josh has mostly lived apart from since their parents got divorced. Mackenzie is prepared for Blake to be just as awful as Josh, but she finds herself actually enjoying his company...enough to sleep with him that night, even though she never does one night stands.
The next morning, everyone wakes up with massive hangovers, only to discover that Josh and his girlfriend Courtney were stabbed to death in the kitchen sometime during the night. They were all drunk, but surely someone should have heard something?
Unfortunately, since the cabin was locked up and there were no signs of forced entry, the police immediately assume that someone in the group must have committed the murders. Mackenzie refuses to believe that one of her friends could be capable of such a thing, and she's so drawn to Blake that she doesn't believe he could have done it either. But if the killer wasn't one of them, then who was? And what if those around Mackenzie have more secrets than she realizes?
I wasn't a fan of the first book by Preston I read, The Cellar, and this one made me regret that I still have three more of Preston's books in my collection to read. This is what I get for buying multiple books by a new-to-me author. In my defense, three of them were a shrink-wrapped bargain set. But still.
Most of the characters were morons. The only halfway smart one was Blake, and that might've just been because he was constantly around Mackenzie and therefore looked smarter by comparison. Mackenzie was...frustrating. She was convinced the cops were overlooking something, but her method of "investigation" mostly involved looking around frantically, blowing up at Blake anytime he asked logical questions that took things in directions she didn't agree with, and telling herself repeatedly that the murderer couldn't possibly be any of her friends as all of them gradually told her enormous secrets that gave them all motives.
She constantly wanted to go to the police with half-baked theories and random "evidence" she found that I'm pretty sure couldn't legally be used (a random wrapper with some blood on it that she, a suspect, said she'd found in the woods?). And yet when she did have something genuinely alarming that she should have shared with the police, threatening texts from an unknown number, she kept it to herself.
The ending was a mess. It seemed like Preston was attempting a twist, but it was so sloppily done that it fell flat. It didn't help that the characters continued to be morons right up to the end. The last paragraph just about made my eyes roll out of my head.
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