The entire Story family has secrets. Whatever pulled them apart years ago isn’t over—and this summer, the cousins will learn everything . If they can survive the season.” SN: You switch perspectives in this book, like you have in other books, but this time there are so many different characters and routes you could have taken. How did you decide, ultimately, to allow these specific characters to tell the story of this family? With the same patterns as usual - a mystery that needs to be solved, a couple of twists in the events, a moment of action in the finale chapter, a “situationship” between two characters -, KMM was capable of creating something different from her usual scenario but that still feels like hers. Sounds interesting, right? I applaud the advertising team for making me think so, because this was quite literally the most anticlimactic mystery novel I have ever read. The characters were bland, the twists entirely random, and the plot meandered until the 90% mark.

The cousins is a great mystery book. Surprisingly, the book is not about murder like most of the books by Karen M. McManus. Karen wrote this book for tweens and teens and it isn’t very intense. She wanted to write a book that doesn’t really have to do with murder, but with family, friendship and family history. The book is lots of fun but parents should be concerned with a few things. The narrative doesn't show much drinking (but a character is said to have gotten drunk) , and characters use profanity (including "f—k" and "s—t") but not very frequently. For a mystery book, there isn't much violence shown/written. Still, expect a very brief shooting and suspense, plus murders and impostors are referred to, but not shown/ written or heavily described. The interactions between many families in the novel offer conversation points regarding family dynamics, particularly how to handle difficult family histories and other unsettling subjects. There are messages about working as a team and never giving up. Great book for 11-13 year olds! Cousins is an engrossing story that runs on in the head long after it has finished.’ — Dominion Sunday TimesAlso, there was no point in Allison's POV. It didn't give me any information, and when it did, I already knew about it because the present timeline had already covered that so we were basically just getting another confirmation. As the summer progresses, other strange things happen. Their grandmother leaves the island. Her lawyer, Donald, tries to get the cousins to leave by offering them another job. They stay. Milly discovers that Jonah is not their cousin. Milly and Aubrey keep his secret. They learn that Matt, Mildred's assistant's son, drowned on the same beach that Adam wrote about in a book he published. Additionally, a girl named Kayla, who knew their parents, died in a car accident around the same time that Mildred disinherited their parents. It seems as if Dr. Baxter knows a secret. The trio wonders if there is a connection between the deaths and Mildred’s action toward her children.

In addition to the current timeline, there's also a past perspective following Milly's Mom, Allison, in the summer leading up to their disinheritance. Eventually, it all pieces together into a more than startling conclusion. I liked this book, but it felt a good deal slower than McManus’s previous works, especially in the beginning. I’m used to her books hitting the ground running and with The Cousins you have to wait for the story to come to a boil. The ending also felt a little rushed, probably because of the slower pacing in the first part. That said, I’m glad that the author is trying out something different from her last three books, and I hope she feels like she can branch out even more in the future.Except, it doesn’t happen right away. For the most part, the first third of The Cousins allowed some of the cousins — and myself — to get to know each other. While I honestly thought such a slow start would’ve irritated me, I found it to be a much needed introduction into the Story’s… well, story. Filled with complications and mysteries, and concerning secrets, there was no shortage of rabbit holes to follow throughout the novel. Now I'll start off with the best of the two, which is the friendships. I liked watching the three of them go from strangers to best friends, and I really liked their whole overall friendship. Not much to say, since we didn't get much, since it's a short mystery book. Moving from the forties to the present, from the country to the protests of the cities, Cousins is the story of these three cousins. Thrown together as children, they have subsequently grown apart, yet they share a connection that can never be broken.

The kids who found Mr. Larkin are her way in, and her ex–best friend, Tripp Talbot, was one of them. Without his account of events, the other two kids might have gone down for Mr. Larkin’s murder—but instead, thanks to Tripp, they're now at the top of the Saint Ambrose social pyramid. Tripp’s friends have never forgotten what Tripp did for them that day, and neither has he. Just like he hasn’t forgotten that everything he told the police was a lie. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: McManus, Karen M. The Cousins. Delacorte Press, 2020. Kindle Edition. The teenager cousins who are sent to the resort which the grandmother they never met owns, barely know each other. Let me introduce them: Milly: cool, cunning, sharp witted, posh one,Allison’s daughter. Aubrey ( here we go, we have another A lettered character) insecure, sweet, peace maker, successful swimmer.: Adam’s daughter who hates her father’s guts but we don’t know the reason at the beginning. SN: Much of your work is about secrets, secret keeping, and closely guarded information. How hard is it to tell stories about secrets and how hard is it for your characters to keep them in this age of social media? I mean, secret keeping almost seems like a lost art. I’m going to start this review off by saying that I had some high hopes for this book and they were not met. The main issue I had was with the characters. I was not as invested in their story as I should have been.

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SN: Do you ever feel like you want to write something completely different like a romance or short story collection or horror novel? I was so close to give five stars but the final revelation made me question the entire premise because there are still plot holes and the big twist at the end was too hard to be kept hidden for nearly 3 decades ( as you consider the characters live in a small island with noisy, gossiping inhabitants so this kind of mystery cannot be kept too long! ) I love the author’s work and when my arc request has been rooted at the pending purgatory of NG , I’m so happy to buy my own copy! It’s worth every penny you spend! I really liked the setting. Small island towns are just my vibe, and it played into the mystery aspect very well. I would have liked to have seen more of the hotel and the town, but the snippets we got were excellent. Writing – 6/10 So, there were a lot of plot twists in this book. Many of them I didn't guess- most of them, actually. It just felt like they came out of nowhere at times. And some of them you could probably miss if you were skimming or just not paying attention, which honestly probably would've happened to me if I was skimming, which I wasn't *cheers*