Thank you very much to the publishers and Netgalley for sending me the audiobbook of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Eight hours.
Six friends.
One sniper . . .
Eighteen year old Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV, heading to the beach for Spring Break. It’s a long drive but spirits are high. Until the RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. There’s no mobile phone reception and nobody around to help. And as the wheels are shot out, one by one, the friends realise that this is no accident. There’s a sniper out there in the dark watching them and he knows exactly who they are. One of the group has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for.
It is hard to avoid the hype surrounding Holly Jackson’s books if you are actively online. It was down to this hype that I picked up A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder which unfortunately I did not enjoy. Despite that, as soon as I saw she was releasing a new stand-alone book I wanted to give it a read and see if this one would live up to the hype. Although Five Survive did not completely live up to the hype surrounding it, I did enjoy giving this one a read.
Eighteen-year-old Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV, heading to the beach for Spring Break. Despite the long drive, spirits are high until the RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. There is nobody around to help and no mobile phone reception and as the wheels of the RV are shot out, one by one, the friends realise that this is no accident. There is a sniper out there, watching the, and he knows exactly who they are. One of the group has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for.
I was expecting this one to be fast-paced right from the start so was a little disappointed when it a little while for the pace to pick up. When that did happen though the book was incredibly fast-paced and began to take some unexpected twists and turns which I did enjoy. I did enjoy the number of twists and turns that happened throughout this book. They were all shocking and took me by surprise. I did manage to guess one of them but that didn’t take away from the shock of when that twist actually happened. One thing I found really interesting was that this entire book is solely set on an RV. It made imagining the setting incredibly easy and allowed me to understand how trapped the characters must have been feeling.
The characters in this book are so varied and complex. Red, the main character, is easily the most complex of them all. She is a character I didn’t know whether to trust or not at first but I grew to like her in the end. I just wish she had stuck up for herself a little more though. Simon was my favourite character in this book. He is very easy to like and his humour brought some much needed light-hearted moments to the story. Oliver and Arthur are two characters I hope to never meet in real life. They both bring some really interesting things to the book but I just didn’t get on with them personally. Finally Maddy and Reyna in my opinion were forgettable characters. They felt as though they were there to add numbers but that being said they did allow for some interesting dialogue.
Five Survive may not have been my favourite read of the year but it was an enjoyable and fast-paced one. It has definitely changed my opinion on Holly Jackson books and I will be looking out for what she is going to be releasing next as I will be sure to give it a read and see what I think. I listened to the audiobook of Five Survive and the narration really helped to bring the story to life in a different way and definitely added to the tension of the book.
Overall, Five Survive is the perfect book to pick up if you are looking for something packed full of twists and turns. It will keep you on the edge of your seat and hook you in straight away.
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