One of Us is Next

(By the way, if you need to catch up on the first book, see here for a full summary of One of Us is Lying (Book #1). That said, that this book, One of Us Is Next (Book #2), really does recaps anything you need to know from the previous book. So feel free to just jump into Book #2 even if your memory is fuzzy.)

In Part I, this book (Book #2) starts about eighteen months after the events of One Of Us Is Lying (Book #1). The students at Bayview High get a group text from an unknown number ("Unknown") about a new Game. Unknown will pick one person at a time for a round of "Truth or Dare". "Truth" means a secret about you is revealed to everyone. Dare is a challenge. No reply defaults to "Truth" (and the advice Unknown gives is to "always take the Dare.")

Phoebe (a junior) is selected as the first player. Her secret, that she slept with her older sister Emma's (a senior) boyfriend is soon revealed. Next, a "Dare" and then another happens. Then, Maeve (a junior) gets chosen. Her secret, that she dumped her best friend Knox because he couldn't get it up, is revealed. Things are quiet and then news breaks that Brandon, a kid who is a jock and kind of a jerk, has died from an accident at a construction site. Knox was there, too, but he was injured and doesn't remember what happened.

In Part II, Phoebe, Maeve and Knox try to figure out what happened. They eventually determine that Brandon's death was an accident that occurred during his "Dare". Nate (from Book #1) thinks it wasn't an accident, and that the construction site was engineered to harm Brandon. Phoebe also gets a message from a stranger asking to meet. Phoeve, Maeve, Louis (Maeve's love interest) and Knox go to scope out the stranger ("Intense Guy") and take down his license plate info. Separately, Knox thinks his parents know something about Brandon's death, so Maeve steals some files off his mother's computer. Maeve has also been tracking a forum on Reddit where someone involved in this game seems to be posting, and that person mentions Phoebe.

Meanwhile, the weekend of Eli and Ashton's wedding arrives (characters that met during Book #1). Eli is a lawyer that Knox interns for, and Eli has recently gotten some cops convicted in a high-profile case. Maeve and Knox are busy tailing Intense Guy's car and researching. They discover that Intense Guy is Jared Jackson, the younger brother of one of Eli's convicted cops, Ray Jackson. They also find out that Phoebe's father died many years ago because a forklist that Brandon Weber had been playing with (when he was 13) malfunctioned, killing Phoebe's dad. Brandon's parents got him off the hook.

Maeve and Knox tail Jared Jackson, who shows up and drops a bomb off at Eli's wedding. Maeve and Knox rush to move the bomb away, where it detonates without killing anyone. Afterwards, Emma's sister admits that she pretended to be Phoebe (Emma had already known about Phoebe sleeping with her ex and was angry) and made a revenge pact with Jared. Emma promised to help him get revenge (she didn't know Eli was the target), and Emma wanted Brandon to be injured (not killed). But as soon as the Game started, Emma backed out.

Then, Emma's lawyer shows her a chat log, and Emma and Phoebe know implicitly that their tech-savvy younger brother, Owen, must have re-engaged contact with Jared for fun (just playing the Truth or Dare game). However, when Brandon died, Owen stopped contacting Jared. The book ends with them both covering for Owen.

For more detail, see the full Section-by-Section Summary.

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