Thank you to ThrillerBookLovers Promotions, Penguin Random House, #partner, for an advanced copy of One Night in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Bantam
Published: August 1, 2023
Summary:
One night. That’s all the time a family has to decide what to do with the man they believe murdered their daughter: Do they forgive him, or take justice into their own hands? An electrifying novel by the author of Nanny Needed. . .
The anonymous letters arrive in the mail, one by one: To find out what really happened to Meghan, meet at this location. Don’t tell anyone you’re coming. In one night, you’ll find out everything you need to know.
Ten years after her murder, the letters tell Meghan’s family exactly when and where to meet: a cliffside home on the Oregon coast. But on the night they’re promised answers, the convicted killer–her high school boyfriend, Cal, who spent only ten years in prison for murder–is found unconscious in his car, slammed into a light pole near the house where the family is sitting and waiting. Is he the one who invited them to gather?
As a storm rampages along the Pacific Northwest, the power cuts off and leaves the family with no chance of returning to the main road and finding help. So they drag Cal back to the house for the remainder of the night. How easy it would be to let him die and claim it was an accident. Or do they help him instead? As the hours tick by, it becomes an excruciating choice. Half of the family wants to kill him. The other half wants him to regain consciousness so he can tell them what he knows.
But if Cal wakes up, he might reveal that someone in the family knows more than they’re letting on. And if that’s the case, who is the real killer? And are they already in the house?
My thoughts:
This is the first book I’ve read by Georgina Cross and it definitely will not be the last. I’m not sure how I haven’t read anything by her before now, but I’m so glad #ThrillerBookLoversPromotions introduced her to me…I cannot wait to dig into her backlist!
This locked-room style thriller kept me engaged and flipping through the pages from start to finish. I love a story that involves secrets and family trauma and this one has that in spades! I loved that the story takes place over the course of one night, with flashbacks to fill in what happened all those years ago. It creates such a layered, tense story. I’m a big fan of atmospheric reads and this one definitely fit that bill – between the secluded house on the cliff, the raging storm – both outside and in – and not knowing who invited everyone to the house in the first place and why.
The story is told from multiple points of view – it made hearing each person’s side of the story add another layer to an already complex situation, plus it made you question who you could really trust. Again, these are all things I love when reading a thriller.
I had so many theories as to what direction this book was going to take at different points throughout the book and was quite shocked at some of the revelations that happen over the course of the story…and I couldn’t have loved it more. It truly kept me on edge the whole time!
This is a great book to add to you summer reading list…be sure to grab it when it releases on August 1st!
