The Cousins

The Storys are the envy of their neighbours: owners of the largest property on their East Coast island, they are rich, beautiful, and close. Until it all falls apart. The four children are suddenly dropped by their mother with a single sentence:
You know what you did.
They never hear from her again.
Years later, when 18-year-old cousins Aubrey, Milly and Jonah Story receive a mysterious invitation to spend the summer at their grandmother's resort, they have no choice but to follow their curiosity and meet the woman who's been such an enigma their entire lives.
This entire family is built on secrets, right? It's the Story legacy.
This summer, the teenagers are determined to discover the truth at the heart of their family. But some secrets are better left alone.
THE BRILLIANT NEW THRILLER FROM INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ONE OF US IS LYING KAREN M MCMANUS

Content Tags:

Perfect for readers who want:

• Mystery and suspense for a young adult audience.
• Lots of twists and turns.
• An irreverent protagonist who really isn’t in it for the money.
• Complicated family drama that will keep you guessing.
• An adorable romance best defined as “it’s complicated.”

Many thanks to Penguin and TheWriteReads for a copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review and for inclusion on this blog tour.

I’ve had Karen M. McManus books recommended to me more times than I can count, and I just never quite got around to reading them. So when I saw she had a new book coming out, I knew I had to jump on the fandom train! Because you can only skip out on a good thing so many times before you start kicking yourself for it, am I right?

The Cousins plays with the old trope of estranged families with money at stake to weave a compelling mystery filled with secrets, lies, and betrayals. Oh what a web McManus weaves … and no one’s safe from its sticky clutches.

So okay, I know what the hype is about now, and yeah, I’m definitely gonna have to go back and read her other books. Parts of this were a little predictable, including the big reveal, but honestly, that didn’t dim my enjoyment in the least bit. I enjoyed every step of this journey!

This book was full of plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing!

As far as thrillers go, if you’re looking for delicious family secrets with the potential to destroy everyone in the vicinity … yes, this book has it. Check that off the list. McManus takes family secrets to a whole new level, because there are two generations in this book, and neither of them have the full story or know what’s going on, which makes the secrets all the more appealing!

There are definitely parts of this that are a little more predictable, but that didn’t detract from the enjoyability. Actually, I think it made the less predictable twists all the more effective, because you’re sitting there waiting for X to happen, and Y happens instead!

I love mystery/thrillers with an atmosphere that balances dark and light, and this book hits that sweet middle spot, where there are definitely darker things that happen, but overall, the characters are teenagers. They laugh. They have fun. They snark about their ridiculous parents. It’s really the best of all worlds when it comes to YA thriller mysteries.

McManus touches on a lot of critical social issues in this book, all wrapped in the mystery, which really added a lot of depth to the plot.

I love a good book that feels lived in, and since this is set in the real world, that feels all the more important to me. Real world issues are definitely a thing still.

One of the main characters is biracial, and that comes into play a bit. There’s also some really heavy issues like cheating, miscarriage, classism, emotional abuse, alcoholism, and a few other things, I’m sure. Look, this family isn’t exactly rainbows and sunshine, and that really shows.

This really brings the characters and the situation to life, though! The name of the game is secrets, right? Well, secrets tend to be ugly, by their very nature, and McManus doesn’t shy away from the darker side of life, which I appreciate in mystery thrillers! Yes, bring on all the nitty-gritty things characters wish had been left in the past. I want it aaaall!

The story takes place between two timelines, two generations, each unraveling the past little by little.

I’m sometimes on the fence about multiple points of view and multiple timelines, especially when they’re combined like in this book. However, McManus did a wonderful job of separating the two, making them distinct, but also giving each one a purpose. They’re working towards the same endpoint, and that’s obvious from the very first timeline split. Plus, oh my gosh is it ever more effective getting to see the messed-up, emotionally damaged, emotionally distant adults as kids! It really adds to the characters, in general.

Overall, I’m just a fan of how this book unravels! It’s like a puzzle that’s pieced together slowly, and sometimes pieces go together the way you imagine they will and sometimes you’re stuck there trying to force them and wondering why it isn’t working when McManus just straight up hands you another piece and makes you feel silly that you didn’t even realize you had the wrong piece in the first place!

The characters in this are just irresistible and impossible not to fall in love with … you know, except the ones that are utterly unbearable.

McManus strikes a really nice balance between the characters. I mean, they’re not all relatable and full of banter and entertainment. There’s a really nice contrast between the cousins, who are currently teens, and their pretty crappy adult counterparts. Where things get even more muddled, though, is that in the past, when the adults were teens, they were just as relatable and adorable. The development is done so well that I really don’t want to say too much about it lest I ruin something, so all I’ll say is there is definitely a disconnect between the parents you meet in the beginning of the book and the teens you meet towards the middle. I’m pretty sure there’s something to be said there for character development and the things you lose on the way to adulthood. I will say that it was sometimes hard to keep the older generation straight, because all their names are so similar, and I sometimes confused them and had to go back and re-read, but that was pretty minor.

The main characters are really Milly, Aubrey, and Jonah, and they’re fantastic. They’ve actually never really met (except maybe once when they were really little), and all the Storys have been sort of just … existing in separate little worlds, detached from each other. So bringing them together is a good idea, of course, right?! What could go wrong?!

I loved being able to follow the three cousins because they don’t really know any more about being Storys than the reader does, which makes our introduction to the family so much more effective, because everyone’s basically seeing it for the first time. Plus, even though the plot is a little larger than life in terms of rich relatives and hidden secrets, the teenagers are just so relatable that it hurt. Oof, reminders of my teen years. Yikes.

Other Reviews:

• Sinfully Wicked
• Read to Ramble
• The Strawberry Post

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