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We all have some deep dark secret that we'd rather take to our grave than reveal it to even our closest friends. Just when you think you know your friends, you find out that you really don't know them at all.
The Cabin, by Natasha Preston is a character driven story that keeps you on a snowball of revealed secrets. In this young circle of seven friends, no one really knows the other as well as they think as they do. Someone amongst them is a murderer and as this mystery unfold, so does hidden secrets.
The summary of the story reads, "There may only be one killer, but no one is innocent.
When Mackenzie treks to a secluded cabin in the woods with six friends, she expects a fun weekend of partying, drinking, and hookups. But when they wake to find two of their own dead and covered in blood, it's clear there's a killer among them.
As the police try to unravel the case, Mackenzie launches her own investigation. Before long secrets start to emerge, revealing a sinister web of sins among the original seven friends. The killer is still free. Every one of them is a suspect. And Mackenzie starts to realize that no one is innocent…"
This story received a lot of mixed reviews - from unlikable characters to a story that keeps you on the edge. Although I agree that none of the characters are likable, I disagree with some reviews of it being a "horrible" story. I'm not sure what the readers expected. The mystery is who amongst this group of friends is the murderer. During a weekend getaway to a cabin, five of the seven friends wake up to find two of them laying dead on the kitchen floor. As they're all trying to figure out who in their group could have done this, secrets come to surface and Mackenzie in particular begins to questions how well she knows her friends. They're all suspects and they're all accusing each other of the double murders.
Some secrets don't make sense, but it reveals another side of a friend that no one knew. In the end, when Mackenzie and Blake are zoning in on the killer, she confesses. Not only does she confess, but the story leaves you on a cliffhanger with her suicide. So in the end, justice is never served. You never know if Mackenzie and Blake tell the police about the confession and if so, whether or not the police believed them. You're left wondering if the author, Natasha purposely wanted the reader to draw their own conclusion about how the remaining friends move beyond all this tragedy throughout the story. From the beginning to the end, there weren't any happy moments. Natasha keeps her readers to the grind of the mystery - who did it and why as all these secrets keep popping up. To some, that makes it a bad story. For me, it made it an interesting story because just when you thought you knew the characters or who committed the murders - you really don't!
