ARC Review: Available July 16th


One One Survives by Hannah Mary McKinnon. Thank you to @htpbooks, @hp_hive for my #GIFTED copy. My opinion is voluntary and my own.

Vienna and Madison are BFFs from high school. They are the complete opposite. While Vienna comes from a broken family, on the wrong the side of the tracks, Madison comes from loving, albeit, controlling parents that are both lawyers and wealthy. The girls have a shared love for music and both sing and play instruments. They even had a two-person band in high school. Now, as new adults and struggling with the real world, the girls decide to start a band and make their dreams come true.

Vienna, the creative genius/song-writer/drummer/vocalist is the soul of the band and Madison knows it. Madison feels snubbed when Vienna starts making decisions without her and she even takes undue credit for co-writing their most famous song. Vienna takes it all in stride, but then a horrific accident occurs and the band is trapped in a snow-storm, lost in the woods.

The book flips back and forth from present to past.

My thoughts:

With missing band members, dead friends and many unanswered questions, the author took me on a thrilling ride that had me guessing up until the very end. I just did not see it coming until it was too late. Definite shock factor and such a dramatic TWIST! This book was seriously surprising! Loved it!

This book grabbed me right away and didn't let go.....I couldn't put it down!

We have Vienna and Madison who after a small rough start become best friends. They form a rock group that seems promising but falls. We then get them adding more to their group to be a band again and big success seems to be on the horizon... Until an accident claims the life of one member right away and only one survivor is found....Vienna.

At first, I thought Madison was a spoiled rich girl who was too toxic of a person. I felt bad for Vienna because of her verbally abusive mom and her jerk of a stepdad. But then the twist comes, and comes, and comes even more and you start to see fractures in the "bad girl Madison" story. We get to see Vienna go through in her mind what really took place and it's pretty chilling. And the epilogue 😱

Such a great thriller and one I'll think of for awhile!

Rating: 5/5 Stars
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Now this is how you write a thriller!! Wow, I absolutely loved this book so much that I devoured it in a day. Only One Survives is about a band The BitterSweet after an accident claimed the lives of only one and one missing. It has blood and gore and murder and toxicity and drama galore and I absolute was here for it.
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One One Survives is told in a dual timeline if you will. You get glimpses into Vienna and Madison’s past, the accident itself, and then after the accident. It is extremely fast paced and it very easy to follow.
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There is the perfect balance of likable and unlikable characters bringing in this feeling of dread as band members begin to die and as secrets get revealed. Super shocking twists start about a little past the halfway mark, leaving you with your jaw on the ground. After the initial bomb drop, McKinnon continues with multiple perfectly timed twists.
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Only One Survives was absolutely chilling; this was the perfect book to pick up during a super long heatwave here in PA. It is atmospheric and there are volatile happenings going on. It was suspenseful and everything I have been searching for in a thriller.
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Highly recommending this one to all of my thriller fans! This one was great! Only One Survives was just released on 7/16, be sure to grab this one! Huge thank you to NetGalley, Hannah Mary McKinnon and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Vienna Taylor, a drummer with a passion for music and dreams of making it big with her best friend, experiences a tragic turn of events when their all-female pop rock band, Bittersweet, meets with a deadly accident during a blizzard. Stranded in an abandoned cabin, Vienna's hopes for their music career shatter as her best friend, Madison mysteriously disappears.

Hannah McKinnon impresses with a captivating story that blends superb storytelling with haunting lyrics showcased in Bittersweet's songs, offering deep insights into Vienna's mindset. I loved the use of various mediums like blog posts and social media comments. Overall, a very compelling read.

WHO would BE the “Only one to Survive”? Clever title by @authorhannahmarymckinnon and it kept my mind spinning.

We all know what to expect in a suspense/thriller novel, but would it include 2 best friends in high school destined to be musicians with a dream to create a band, rubbing elbows with the elite and careening off a cliff leaving one dead and one severely injured? “Only One Survives” is a graphic thriller based around a 5 girl band, The Bittersweet!

Drummer, Vienna and Guitarist Madison both from very different backgrounds make up the two who started “EmVee” which became the “Bittersweet” after adding 3 others to their band! An entertaining, twisty, fun and flirty plot that is gripping to its death! Who’s death?

Their Tahoe catapulted off a treacherous cliff during the worst of storms, leaving the girls fighting for their lives! Who will survive? What will impact the reality of who will survive? “ Only One Survives” has it all, a riveting thriller that just might surprise you !

I recommend this as your next suspense filled novel as well as any of Author Hannah Mary McKinnon’s International Best Sellers!
Thank you to @Harlequin Trade Publishing/Mira @netgalley for this complimentary eARC in exchange for my honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I knew from the beginning of this book that I was not vibing with it. I should have DNF, but I really wanted to hang in there because of all of the good reviews I’d seen of this book.

This story felt very disjointed to me. There was some relevant context given in Vienna’s family history, but it all felt dragged out and unnecessary to the overall plot. The twist mid book was actually very shocking so I enjoyed that, but otherwise, this book felt like ramblings rather than a purposeful story.

I think it’s common that characters in thrillers are devious and deceptive, but not one character in this book was likable. Every single person was a villain in one way or another. It’s really difficult to enjoy a story when you have not one character to root for.

This book was just overall unrealistic. The killer’s motives didn’t make any sense to me. The final twist was over the top. The story didn’t maintain my interest. This book just wasn’t for me.

Thank you so much to HTP books and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this advance reader copy!

📚 PUBLICATION MONTH BOOK REVIEW 📚

Only One Survives By Hannah Mary McKinnon
Publication Date: July 16, 2024
Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing | MIRA

📚MY RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨
(Rounded up to 5⭐)

📚MY REVIEW:

EVERYBODY has been absolutely raving about this book... And I couldn't wait to get my hands on it! Even though Harlequin has consistently denied my requests for ARCs on NetGalley, I figured I'd take a chance and request this one, just to see what happened... And lo and behold, your girl got approved! 🎉

Y'all, this book WAS as thrilling as everybody said it was! It was SUCH a fast-paced and unputdownable read. I got up early today to finish before work because I couldn't wait to see how this one wrapped up!

This book has multiple timelines, providing context and insight into the characters and their pasts that culminated into what became their present. This is the story about The Bittersweet, an up-and-coming all-female band on the cusp of making it big when tragedy strikes during a blizzard on their way to an industry party in the Catskills. From there, this thriller takes off on a dark path that will utterly captivate you until its very end.

Reminiscent of Daisy Jones and the Six, this book has a rock and roll inspired plotline, interspersed with radio stories and news articles and social media snippets. But this ain't your mama's 1970s rock and roll story. This is a wild thriller with twists and turns that will find you gasping aloud as more and more truths are revealed within its pages. Even when the answer to the mystery was revealed earlier in the story than I expected, I STILL spent much of the book completely shocked by what I was reading. This was the epitome of a diabolical killer -- and I loved every minute of it.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing | MIRA for gifting me this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

#OnlyOneSurvives #HannahMaryMcKinnon #NetGalley #NetGalleyReviews #ARC #bookrecommendations #bookreviews #thrilleraddict #thrillerlover #thrillerread #booklovers

I'll be honest: I'm quite disappointed with this book.
When I read the synopsis I got intrigued by the mystery envolving the accident with girls from a music group.
That's what I wanted from this book: to see how the accident happened, who survived and that happened later.
But what I got, from the most part of this book, were events before the accident: a lot of background of the 2 main characters - who already were best friends - and how their friendship survived after some pretty bad and heavy moments of their lives, up to the point they became a band with other girls. Even though I did enjoy some aspects of these 'past chapters', I was way more interested in the present, which only prevails after way over half of the book.
The author made some choices regarding the last 20%, and most of them didn't please me.
I didn't hate anything about it. I just had different expectations, I guess.
This book, in my opinion, ended up being much more of a character-driven lit, fiction story than a mystery/thriller one - which was what I hoped it would be.

I enjoyed this one. It was a bit predictable but I enjoyed the back and forth POV between past and present. It is a quick read due to the thrilling story being told. It's fun to watch play out even if you figure it out.

Unfortunately this was a miss for me. I couldn't relate to the characters and wasn't invested in the story. It had a good premise, but the whole girl band/boy band trope is overdone.

This is my first five star thriller in a while 🙌

I was completely engrossed from start to finish. I absolutely loved that it follows an all female pop rock band.

The Bittersweet were in a car crash that left one member dead and another injured. They had to seek shelter in an abandoned cabin in order to survive in the cold weather — but death doesn’t stop there.

The character development was done so well. In the beginning we learn about drummer Vienna and her best friend Madison, who originally formed a duo called EmVee. Vienna’s home life was traumatic and forced her to escape her hometown and move in with Madison. They have a toxic friendship, but keep coming back together. As their duo evolves into a five-member all female band, their star continues to rise until the accident.

This story showed the dark sides of fame, specifically how social media can cause harm.

The author did an incredible job building suspense. I loved the dual timelines — we get snippets of what happened on that tragic night, and then the story backtracks leading up to the accident. Sometimes with dual timelines I’ll find myself wanting to speed up one of the timelines in order to get back to the other, but that never happened with this book. I ate up every single chapter 👏

I can’t recommend this thriller enough!

I can always count on Hannah Mary McKinnon for a captivating thriller. Oooooo this one. I really enjoyed it!! I don’t want to give too much bc spoilers but it’s good!!

I will be completely honest when I say I almost DNF'd this book. It felt like I was dragging myself through the first part of this book, so much so that I told myself I would put it down if it didn't get better in part two. And then BAM! The plot twist of all twists hit me like a freight train. The writing also felt so different, like the style changed when the unreliable narrator was revealed, which I suppose is a compliment. However, I still stand by my opinion that the first half of this book was almost boring at points. I did like the scenes from the day of the accident spliced throughout, I thought they were interesting and dynamic to read. It was mostly the scenes with Valerie and Maddison in NYC as friends and forming the band that I felt like trudging through. I was annoyed at Val for putting up with so much, but also for contributing to this toxic friendship. I know it all is explained in the second half but I just didn't care. All of that being said, I think this is a book that will stick with me for a while just because of the absurd twists it took me on. I will definitely pick up another book by this author in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. This officially publishes on 7/16/24!

I am going to give a disclaimer at the top of this review in that this book fell completely flat for me. Although there were elements that were interesting, such as the girl-band dynamic, I found myself struggling to get through this one. While reading, I found the first half to be a lot of character and scene building, leaving a lot of the “action” to the second part. As a reader, this “slow burn” type of setup is not my personal favorite. I also guessed one of the larger twists at the end, which although it was logical given the plot, frustrated me when reading. To me, this would be a good read for anyone interested in “slow burn” type thrillers or are new to the genre.

"Only One Survives" is a gripping thriller that dives into the messy world of female friendships, jealousy, toxic relationships, and the high price of fame. Hannah Mary McKinnon does an impressive job of weaving a suspenseful story that keeps you hooked.

The story revolves around Vienna Taylor and her complex relationship with her best friend Madison Pierce. The alternating timelines between the past and present are handled really well, showing us how their friendship evolved and the creepy events after the accident. This back-and-forth keeps you guessing and adds layers of mystery.

McKinnon excels in character development, particularly with Vienna and Madison. Vienna's drive and loyalty come through strong, while Madison's mysterious vibe keeps you on your toes. The supporting cast, including the other band members and their entourage, add more depth and highlights the band's dynamics.

The book's first part is a thrilling ride, focusing on survival in the wilderness with some chilling and seriously unexpected twists. The abandoned cabin setting adds a spooky, isolated feel, making their struggle even more intense. McKinnon’s vivid descriptions and pacing make this portion of the book particularly engaging.

The second part of the book shifts gears, focusing on Vienna's life after the accident and her struggle to uncover the truth. While the pace slows a bit here, it’s packed with crucial details and shocking revelations that deepen the story.

"Only One Survives" combines suspense, drama, and psychological twists in a way that feels fresh and thrilling. McKinnon's knack for creating believable characters and maintaining a sense of unease throughout makes this book a standout. If you’re into psychological thrillers or stories about the dark side of fame, you’ll find this one satisfying.

Oh my what a twisty thriller! A girl band has a horrible accident on a snow-covered road. The girls try and take care of and save each other.

The book is told in real time and prior to the accident for insight into the two main characters Madison and Vienna. As the book goes along the twists and turns just keep coming. When I thought I had the story figure out…bam…another twist!!!

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read and review this book!!!

Only One Survives by Hannah Mary McKinnon was a very intriguing story.
I was not disappointed in the storyline. I thought the mystery was good with lots of twists that I didn't see coming and kept me glued to my Kindle.
The author has written a suspenseful, mysterious and compelling novel.
This book kept me absolutely hooked until the very end with a wild ending.
A page turner of a suspense novel that will suck you in quickly so sit down read, and enjoy the ride.

Thank You NetGalley and MIRA for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Only One Survives is deliciously unhinged and has @hannahmarymckinnon serving up her absolutely best rollercoaster ride of mayhem yet.

This book has all my favourite things when it comes to stories - dual timelines, questionable characters, dead bodies piling up and a clock that’s ticking on the answers being revealed once and for all. I just LOVE characters behaving badly, and this one serves it up in heaps.

The added element of the all-female band on the brink of making it big right as tragedy strikes is the icing on the cake - it was giving me early 2000’s music nostalgia and I’m such a sucker for behind the scenes band dynamics.

No spoilers, but this is WITHOUT QUESTION one of my favourite reads of the year. Creeping intensity, heightening dread and a would-do-anything-for-fame level of ambition makes this a can’t look away whodunnit that can’t be missed this summer.

Many thanks to @harpercollinsca for the book and @hannahmarymckinnon - god knows I’m dying for what comes next.

Wow, this book was just wow. Every single time I thought I knew what was going on something happened. I was completely shocked by the ending. I fell into every single trap that the author set in this book. Now that I know the ending of the book, it is painfully obvious what is going to happen. There were so many breadcrumbs spread throughout the book to help the reader figure it out but the story was so good and the book so engrossing that you really had to pay attention. I was shocked reading the final chapter because I fell for the trap. I highly recommended reading this book if you like the style of Lisa Jewell and Shari Lapena. Once I learned that this book was about an accident, a band and the mystery that ensues after, I was hooked.

In Only One Survives, a female band is involved in a car accident in snowy weather and only one member survives. I loved how this book was told. It flip flopped between before and after the accident, as told by the surviving band member, but it also included snippets from a podcast and social media posts. This was the most unreliable narrator situation ever, where I got sucked in one way, so emotionally attached and then after so many twists and turns, I didn’t know what to believe, who to trust and what direction things were going. The entire thing kept me guessing and was so intense, so well-done in how it all played out and tied together, all while being a bit bonkers. Such a wild, thrilling and emotional ride.