Five Survive
Holly Jackson
400 pages
Delacorte Press
Published November 29, 2022
About the book:
From the author of the New York Times and multimillion-copybestselling A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series comes a new blockbuster thriller about a road trip that turns deadly. Eight hours. Six friends. Five survive.
Red Kenny is on a road trip for spring break with five friends: Her best friend – the older brother – his perfect girlfriend – a secret crush – a classmate – and a killer.
When their RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service, they soon realize this is no accident. They have been trapped by someone out there in the dark, someone who clearly wants one of them dead.
With eight hours until dawn, the six friends must escape, or figure out which of them is the target. But is there a liar among them? Buried secrets will be forced to light and tensions inside the RV will reach deadly levels. Not all of them will survive the night. . .
An instant classic, this crime thriller was named a best book of the year by Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Waterstones and Indigo.
Content Warning: guns, death threats, mob violence, death, injury
Book Links:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Indigo | IndieBound
15 reactions while reading Five Survive:
- I’m so excited as I start the book. I love the cover and her last book. I can’t wait to curl up and read.
- I love pictures and illustrations and this one opens with a picture of the RV and a map of the route the friends are traveling. I had to pull out my ipad to enlarge the picture as my Kindle did not do them justice.
- I know it’s a thriller but a little smile for the potential romance between Arthur and Red. (10 PM Chapter 2)
- I’m intrigued as I read about Maddy’s Mom calling and the tension between Red and Maddy at this moment. Wondering what has happened in their past. (10 PM Chapter 2)
- I’m excited. I think the eerie setting has been set and can’t wait to see where this is going. The threat is still unknown. (11 PM Chapter 5)
- On pins and needles. The threat has started (11 PM Chapter 9)
- I am impressed at the resolve of the group at such a young age. They are way more level headed than I would be. (12 am Chapter 11 but will also happen many more times)
- I am now really curious. Who has a secret, what is it and why does someone want them to spill it? (12 AM Chapter 15)
- Reeling from a plot twist. (1 AM Chapter 21)
- Did that just really happen?!?!?! Surprised but not surprised. (2 AM Chapter 23)
- Am very intrigued as the cat and mouse just went up a notch (2 AM Chapters 24 and 26)
- Not as shocked as I should be as I suspected this plot twist (4 AM Chapter 31)
- That was harsh!! (4 AM Chapter 32)
- WHAT???? A huge plot twist (5 AM Chapter 37)
- I was very touched by the memory (5 AM Chapter 40)
My Review:
I really liked this one. There were a lot of layers to the story and I figured a few things out but I was surprised by many things. I wavered back and forth about how much I liked Red. Actually all of the cast, but I did want to know what the secret is, so I kept reading. The reader is in Red’s head through the book and she is slightly off and I was wondering if she was reliable. This was pretty well done because I had a hard time figuring out if I was just reading too much into it or if she was unreliable.
It is fast paced and there was a cat and mouse aspect that I appreciated because you weren’t sure who the second player was. That was a new twist to me. We were never really exposed to the other party until the end. What kept me from giving it five stars is the mixed message. It reads very much YA but these 18 year olds have access to a quite nice RV and are driving from PA to the gulf coast.
One last thing I liked was at the end, instead of having a character narrate what happened to fill in some plot holes, the author choose to have a police transcript, news story and letter. That end of thriller narration is a trope I never like, but this softened it.
I was able to flip back and forth from the ebook and the audiobook and loved Emma Galvin’s narration. She brought the story to life and I was slightly more interested in listening than reading.
Thanks PRH Audio, Delacorte Press and TBR and Beyond Tours for the advanced listening and reading copies.
About the Author:
Holly Jackson was born in 1992. She grew up in Buckinghamshire and started writing stories from a young age, completing her first (poor) attempt at a book aged fifteen. ‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ is a YA Mystery Thriller and her debut novel. She lives in London and aside from reading and writing, she enjoys binge-playing video games and pointing out grammatical errors in street signs.
Author Links:
Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
Tour Schedule:
https://tbrandbeyondtours.com/2022/10/26/tour-schedule-five-survive-by-holly-jackson/
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