From the Bookshelf of Online Reading Challenge…

The Cousins

Karen M. McManus

Start date: September 1, 2025

Finish date: September 30, 2025

Why we're reading this: Online Reading Challenge: September 2025 Pick for Young Adult Literature
[close] Online Reading Challenge: September 2025 Pick for Young Adult Literature

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Jun 16, 2025 Stephanie rated it liked it

Shelves: 2025-reads

The Cousins by Karen McManus is a standalone novel diving into one family's sordid history. What caught my attention about this novel was the premise: three teenage cousins invited to spend the summer with their estranged grandmother at the resort she owns. Sounds intriguing and a bit familiar, right? I thought so, too.
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The three Story cousins, Jonah, Millie, and Aubrey, are contacted by their estranged grandmother, inviting them to spend the summer in a resort beach town. Mildred Story, the est The Cousins by Karen McManus is a standalone novel diving into one family's sordid history. What caught my attention about this novel was the premise: three teenage cousins invited to spend the summer with their estranged grandmother at the resort she owns. Sounds intriguing and a bit familiar, right? I thought so, too.
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The three Story cousins, Jonah, Millie, and Aubrey, are contacted by their estranged grandmother, inviting them to spend the summer in a resort beach town. Mildred Story, the estranged matriarch of the Story family, cut off her four children over twenty years ago, their only notice a cryptic letter stating, 'You know what you did'. Despite her children professing to have no idea what they did to earn her displeasure, Mildred refused to see her children or correspond in any way. This new invitation to her grandchildren comes completely out of the blue, catching everyone off guard. The fact that Mildred is incredibly wealthy has her children hoping that the grandchildren will get access to her money if they land themselves in her good graces.
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Millie, Aubrey, and Jonah have no desire to spend summer with their grandma. They are teenagers with their own summer plans! Despite their protests, the three soon find themselves in the crosshairs of the rich and reclusive woman who disinherited their parents all those years ago. After their initial meeting, the three realize that Mildred's plans are different than what they thought. She becomes increasingly hard to get a hold of, disappearing for trips, and using her assistant to blow off the cousins' requests to meet. The cousins spend their time on island working and looking for more information about their parents. This leads to discovering some of the dark secrets in the Story family's past. What fractured the family structure years ago? Can the cousins find the truth and repair these destroyed relationships?
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Told from the point of view of the three cousins, plus one of their parents, McManus has written a mystery full of twists and turns. Flashback chapters fill in background information and family secrets that the cousins would not have been able to discover on their own. (The flashback chapters are the ones that kept me hooked throughout the book to be honest.) What kept me from completely loving this book were the twists' reveals. I had trouble suspending my disbelief during some of the reveals, as it seemed implausible that only a few people would realize what was happening. The ending also seemed very rushed, to the point where I had to reread the last three chapters and the epilogue to piece together the end, but I'm still confused... This was a three star read for me. ...more

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