Point-of-view is all over the place in this book. It's not uncommon for random John Doe to narrate one chapter, as an outside perspective, and then never be heard from again. So what happened to John Doe? Who cares, he's clearly not important (although apparently important enough to narrate that one chapter). Occasionally John Doe will have two or even three chapters before disappearing, fate unknown. Let's be fair here: we never get to the point of head-hopping, and there are some secondary characters whose point-of-view passages offer someting to further the plot. The one-off characters, though, broaden the focus so much that focus gets a bit lost.
In spite of that, Laura is an interesting and complex character, and one of the reasons I wish we could narrow down the point-of-view a bit is so we can see more of her, rather than seeing what she looks like as a passing glance from John Doe. She's not worried about society's constraints, taboos, or morals. Laura has a gray sort of morality, and given the right motivations, can be persuaded to torture and kill or to save the same guy from the same situation. The best part is that she's equally interesting as hero or villain, which makes her pretty well-rounded and we need more fictional characters like her around.
Maneater involves a number of mini-mysteries as a way of ramping up tension, and sometimes these work and sometimes they don't. In an effort to draw out the drama, though, we get some visible author sleight-of-hand, wherein a character will be shocked by the contents of a letter and then fail to reveal the shiny new secret to the reader. Said character will, however, pass it on to another character, who will in turn also be shocked. And again. And again. This trick can work once, possibly twice if the author is very clever, but when it becomes a recurring theme it changes from something that will drive the reader to keep turning pages to discover what this letter is about and becomes an annoyance. It also increases the risk of the reader guessing the secret before the author has a chance to do the reveal, which is a shame because a good plot twisty revelation is at its most fun when it both makes sense and is surprising.
The book sort of stops rather than really ending. This story is finished but instead of a real conclusion we get the sort of wrapup that assures us of another book, the dreaded sequel bait. Could the book have ended another way, with a little more finality and a little less "pls to buy my new book, Prey, now available everywhere"? Well, I do believe Emson started with an idea for Laura's tale to be two or three books long, and Maneater wraps up the first chapter of that tale. It ends in a natural place to pause the tale, but I can't decide if it's a mark for or against the book that we end in a place so blatantly looking for a sequel. Let's be fair, without the last chapter I'd be griping about how I wondered about the people who did manage to survive and what happened to them. With it, I'm calling sequel bait. Honestly, I'm not sure which I prefer, but either way it's something a reader might appreciate a head's up on.