NetGalley ARC | The One That Got Away with Murder

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating ⭐⭐.5

This should have been exactly the read for me. Questionable narrators and murder are kind of my things, yet here we are.

We have two brothers, rich and handsome, who basically are untouchable - despite both boys' girlfriends ending up dead. Robbie's ex drowned at the family's lake house and Trevor's supposedly overdosed.

Enter Lauren, transferring across the country to finish her senior year at a new school. Clearly has some stuff of her own going on that we find out in pieces. She starts hooking up with Robbie, not knowing any of the stuff about him or his brother at first. But she gradually finds out more info from her fellow teammates when she joins the soccer team - of which Robbie's ex was the star before she died. When she spends a weekend with Robbie at the lake house, she finds evidence that Robbie really could be guilty.

All of this, the cover, and the title were enough to get my attention. Combined with the promise that it was 'perfect for fans of Karen McManus', I wanted to love it SO much.

The first half of the book really pulled me in, but as I went along, it started to fall apart. Lauren's story was slowly revealed - a bit too slowly for me - and it really interrupted the flow of the story. I don't mind main characters who have their own demons; that usually makes a story more interesting.

My issue is that it took far too long to find out exactly what was going on with her and what she was running from. Chapters alternated between the past and present, but I don't feel like that pacing was well-done at all. It honestly kind of made me lose interest in her backstory, and forget about it half the time. So as more was introduced, it felt kind of disjointed and clunky.

The writing itself is good, how the story unfolds is moreso my issue, if that makes sense? And the ending wrapped up way too neatly for me. There were some decent twists, but I did have a good idea who the killer was before it was revealed. That doesn't impact my overall opinion, because it happens more often than not at this point, just because I have read so many YA thrillers in the last few years.

I don't know that I would go as far as not recommending it at all, because others might still like this one. It just wasn't for me.