One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner

4/5 stars

Lisa Gardner really blew me away with One Step Too Far. I haven’t read the first book, so there were a few references that I didn’t really understand, but I still enjoyed this book a lot. While I couldn’t fully conceptualize Frankie as a character, that was more my own fault for not reading the first book than it was the author’s.

Lisa packed so much life and energy in her characters; I’m especially enamoured with her four old friends, the boys from Dudeville. They all grew so much over the book, despite Josh’s circumstances, and they really cemented my love for this book. Even though they had their fights and secrets, they had such a beautiful friendship between them and it was really something to read how it evolved and brought them together by the end. I love their personalities and would absolutely be friends with them if they actually existed!

That being said, I can’t get behind Frankie as much as I wanted to. I do like her as a character and felt that she grew a great deal throughout the book, but her character didn’t go through that final step that I was hoping for in the end. I was looking for that last leap at the end, and it felt like her character stagnated again and lost some of that change that she was capable of. This doesn’t frustrate me enough for me not to continue the series, but it does hold me back from fully committing to her character.

I did think parts of the book were a touch slow. It took more time than I would have liked to heat up, but once it did, things were cooking! I did end up guessing who the “big bad” was a quarter or so through the book, but there were still enough twists and surprises by the end that left me more emotional than I thought I’d be. All in all, a really great book!