Review: Five Survive

Title: Five Survive
Author: Holly Jackson
Genre: Young Adult, Thriller
Publisher: Electric Monkey
Source: Purchased
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: November 29, 2022
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

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.

A game of cat-and-mouse plays out as the group desperately tries to get help and to work out which member of the group is the target. Buried secrets are forced to light in the cramped, claustrophobic setting of the RV, and tensions within the group will reach deadly levels. Not everyone will survive the night.

Review:

Eighteen-year-old Red is traveling with her five friends on an RV for their spring break vacation. Along the way, they lose signal and get lost down a dark road. As they try to turn around, their tires are shot out by a sniper hidden in the darkness. One of the six people in the RV has a secret that the sniper wants, and they can’t leave until he gets it. Over the course of eight hours, each person reveals their secrets as the tension in the RV builds, and only five of them survive.

This was such an intense story! It took place in the limited space of an RV, which made the pace fairly slow, yet it was so suspenseful. Each of the characters had dark secrets in their past, and they were revealed in an attempt to get them to safety. The whole story was cleverly plotted, with clues to the ending sprinkled throughout. 

Five Survive is a dark and suspenseful thriller with a great ending!

Content warnings: death of parent, gun violence, abuse, murder

Have you read Five Survive? What did you think of it?