A review by mrsbooknerd
One In Three by Tess Stimson

2.0

I wavered over whether this was a one or two star but rated two because I did finish it.

I found alot of issues with this book and I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it, but there was something compelling about it because I did want to get to the ending to find out who had killed Andrew.

The structure of the book should have worked in building suspense but I found it lacking tension.

Andrew was a lying, cheating bastard. Did I care which one of his many indiscretions cost him his life? No.
Caz and Louise were manipulative, emotionally blinded and immature. Did I care which of them ended up in prison for murder? No.
In fact, there was barely a redeemable character in the whole book. I just couldn't find any to support.

Louise was so hypocritical. I definitely preferred Caz. Louise hated them both for cheating but she also cheated on Andrew. She complained that during the escalation she couldn't get away from Caz, and yet it was her who moved into Caz's house and took the same job. I wanted to stab Louise to be honest. Even at the end of the book she was still like, oh poor Andrew! Gahhhhh!

Louise sums up the plot in one statement "I'm tired of this tit for that nonsense..."
The whole plot was Lou does this, so Caz does that. Caz does that so Lou does this... until we escalate to the improbable and ridiculous.
At one point Lou is pulled over by the police for drink driving because Caz gave the police 'information', telling them that Louise would be driving over the limit. So the police go to a random road and sit there waiting for Louise to maybe or maybe not drive passed at some point that day and for alcohol to still be in her blood stream. Is this a good use of resource? Would the police not just go to the house and issue a warning? How did Caz know that Lou would be over the limit and that she would drive and that she would drive on that road...? Is it better that they waited until she had perhaps killed someone on the roads and then caught her? It was so ridiculous that if it had occurred earlier in the book I would have stopped reading.

What made it compelling was that none of the narrative voices were entirely truthful and they were all unreliable narrators. One would convince you that she hadn't done X but you would later learn that they had through more reliable narrators. Even now there were some events or plot points that remain fuzzy because no evidence was found against the culprit. It was legit her word against mine and clearing through the detritus was quite fun.

I am not sure that I would pick up another by the author after reading this book