Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - One of Us Knows

Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole

13 reviews

shelfofunread's review

adventurous dark emotional informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I’ve had a fairly patchy relationship with thrillers in recent years. Whilst I love a bit of page-turning suspense, I’ve increasingly found myself remaining distinctly un-shook by twists so-often billed as ‘shocking’. I’ve referred to this in the past as ‘thriller fatigue’ and I suspect it hails from a period in my reading life where everything I picked up was advertised as ‘perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train‘.

Now, for what it’s worth, I enjoyed both The Girl on the Train (although I will forever argue that many of the ‘girls’ in book titles of that nature should be more accurately described as ‘women’. Yes, I know The Woman on the Train is less catchy and I’m sure a ton of focus research said that was the best title, but the infantilisation of adult women will never not boil my blood) and many of the female-centred thrillers that its stratospheric success spawned. But variety is the spice of life and, for a while at least, didn’t it feel as if every other new release was attempting to mine that particular narrative vein?

Recently, however, I’ve noticed a slight shift in the genre. Sure, there are still plenty of thrillers that centre around (often unreliable) female narrators in vulnerable situations. The genre, after all, remains HUGE (according to Nielson, 40% of UK book buyers say they read crime and thriller books and, in 2022, the genre made up 12% of print book purchases, rising to nearly a fifth of audiobooks and more than a third of e-books). But following several years of heavily plot-focused page-turners, I do feel as if the genre has begun to evolve to accommodate both a wider variety of character-driven narratives and a platform for unique storytelling methods.

All of which is a very long-winded introduction to Alyssa Cole’s One of Us Knows: the subject of today’s review and a thriller that, whilst featuring a (you guessed it) unreliable female narrator in a (guessed it again) vulnerable situation, has no qualms about slowing the pace to fully explore its central characters and premise. And as for unique storytelling methods? Well, how about a story that is told by the multiple headmates who occupy the body of a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?

When Kenetria ‘Ken’ Nash winces into consciousness on the end of an old wooden dock on the Hudson, she has no idea why she is there. Ken has been dormant for six years and, in her absence, she and her headmates have apparently been kicked out of their apartment in the midst of a global pandemic. One of her alters, Della, has arranged a new job as resident caretaker of a historic home on an isolated Hudson River island. But now Della has disappeared and, when Ken and her remaining active alters see the Kavanaugh House for the first time, they’re shocked to discover that its an exact replica of the castle that they occupy in their inner world.

When a man turns up dead and they are trapped on the island with a group of possibly dangerous strangers, Ken and her alters are forced to work together to discover both their own connection to Kavanaugh Island and the truth behind the island’s haunted history.

To say that One of Us Knows is a cerebral book is probably to undersell it but what I mean by that is that this is a thriller that very much concerns itself with the mind. Specifically, it concerns itself with Kenetria’s mind. Large parts of the novel take place in the ‘inner world’ that Ken shares with her headmates and, as the book progresses, we get sections narrated by most of the active alters. This does take a little getting used to, especially in the novel’s opening sections, but Alyssa Cole does a great job of distinguishing between the narrative voices of the various headmates and there’s plenty of signposting to help you work out who is speaking at any given time.

I’m no psychologist so I have no idea how accurate Cole’s portrayal of DID is but I did feel like I gained an understanding of the condition’s complexities through the writing, and I appreciated that Ken’s condition was established at the outset of the novel rather than being used as a plot device. Instead the focus is upon how Ken manages her ‘system’ and how, with Della’s disappearance from it, she needs to work with her alters to re-establish their various roles within it.

As the book progresses, we also get to find out more about the trauma that resulted in Kenetria’s development of DID. Although Cole doesn’t dwell on that trauma too much, content warnings do apply for mentions of sexual violence, self harm, confinement, racism, ableism, misogyny, gaslighting, death, and violence. And whilst it didn’t bother me personally, there’s also a hefty amount of swearing.

The exploration of Kenetria’s inner world runs alongside a more conventional ‘locked room’ (or, in this case, locked island) plot that has distinct When There Were None vibes. I don’t want to say too much about the specifics of either plot, or how they interconnect, because the twists are absolute doozies but I will say that personally I found the inner plot to be the more compelling. The interactions between Ken and her various alters was, for me, both the major driver of the narrative and what made One of Us Knows really stand out. Ken and her alters each have their own distinct voices and I really enjoyed seeing the interactions between the headmates and learning more about the development and organisation of their inner world.

This is the first of Cole’s novels that I have read but, on the basis of One of Us Knows, I’d be very interested in reading more of her work. In addition to creating compelling characters, she handles discussions surrounding race, class, privilege, justice and, of course, the treatment of mental illness with sensitivity, and incorporates hefty themes into the novel without impacting upon either narrative pacing or characterisation.

Overall, One of Us Knows made for a compelling and unique thriller. The various plot strands and multiple narrators are well handled whilst the slower pace gave more time for the establishment of both the multiple narrators that co-exist within Kenetria’s inner world and the characters she is interacting with outside of it. With shades of contemporary gothic in the setting – and a hint of horror in the ghostly subplot – Alyssa Cole is clearly unafraid of flexing the boundaries of the thriller genre and I very much look forward to exploring both her backlist and whatever she publishes next!

NB: This review also appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpress.com as part of the blog tour for the book. My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.

Content Warnings

chip8401's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

This was unlike any thriller I have ever read before. It's rooted in DID (Google it), there are 9 personalities in the main grouping and 1 of them seems to have killed someone. It was really hard to keep track of who was who, actually writing it down could help.
Story got confused at times too. Author may have gotten lost in her own creation.
Overall, a very interesting and entertaining story.

Content Warnings

amandas_bookshelf's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

shay43geek's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

tinytrashqueen's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I probably should've looked at the description before reading. I just don't feel great about using DID as a plot device for a thriller.

Content Warnings

crystalisreading's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Wow! what a ride! Not sure it totally stuck the landing, but it was fresh and compelling and I couldn't put it down. Alyssa Cole can write about anything.

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lbelow's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense

5.0

This book is over the top my best book of the year. Maybe of the decade! Every now and again, there's a book you just click with, and this was it for me. Ken's prickly personality and how she comes to realize she is worth kindness and happiness in the end; her contentious relationship with Solomon; the brittle-to-breaking emotional state of everyone in the system and how it ramped up the tension of everything that happened; that layered mystery about past and present, inner and outer worlds, and how they overlapped. I've long been a fan of Alyssa Cole, and she proves in this book her mastery of storytelling!

Mind the triggers, and happy reading!

Content Warnings