Review:
Just in case it isn't obvious, you shouldn't read this book, or even this review, unless you're comfortable with the possibility of getting major spoilers for the first book in the series, One of Us Is Lying. You've been warned.
It's been a year since the events of the first book, and although Simon copycats have occasionally popped up, none of them have stuck around for long - it's hard to be as devious as Simon was, and as well-informed about everyone's secrets. When Bayview High students suddenly get texts from yet another Simon copycat telling them that they're going to be playing Truth or Dare, everyone figures it'll fizzle out like the other times. The anonymous texter picks Phoebe as their first victim, and she ignores them...only for one of her most hurtful secrets to be revealed to everyone when she misses the deadline to play along.
Who is this person, and what's their goal? Those questions are on everyone's minds as the game goes from hurtful and/or dangerous to deadly.
It's been a couple years since I read the first book, but there were enough details in this one to remind me of what happened and the basics of who all the returning characters were. A lot of familiar faces (the Bayview Four, Luis, Eli, etc.) made appearances and had varying levels of involvement in the story, but the POV characters, this time around, were Maeve (Bronwyn's younger sister), Knox (Maeve's best friend, and currently an intern at Unproven), and Phoebe (works as a waitress at Luis's family's restaurant).
Although the setup for this book wasn't as intriguing as the first one, I liked the new POV characters well enough. Maeve was the relatively familiar core - readers already knew a bit about her, her past struggles with leukemia, and her actions in the first book. She spends a large chunk of the book secretly worried that she's having a cancer relapse (I worried right along with her every time she got another nosebleed), but it's later revealed that she's still cancer-free. Knox was probably the least interesting of the three POV characters, but he was still a decent guy I could root for, and I ended up liking Phoebe a lot more than I initially thought I would.
Bronwyn and Nate continued to be kind of exhausting - it would have been weird not to have any updates about them and their relationship, but I was much less interested in them than I was in the POV characters' potential romances. That's one thing I definitely liked about this book more than the first one - the romantic subplots. They developed nicely and didn't feel overdone in the face of everything else going on in the story.
I guessed one of the book's big revelations well before the end, and certainly well before the other characters, although there were still aspects that surprised me. I didn't see that final piece coming at all, and I'm doubtful that the decisions certain characters made about it would hold up well if the story had continued any further.
As usual, McManus delivers a decent but not stellar YA mystery/thriller.
Extras:
Includes a book discussion guide and an interview with the author.
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