“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.”
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
The final book of 2022; and a highly anticipated one at that!
Holly Jackson’s (she/her) newest novel, Five Survive, follows a group of six across eight hours of their road trip on their way to spring break. As much as I was waiting for this one, and as much as I LOVED the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy, this one didn’t give me the thrill I expected it would. It is still enjoyable in its own way, however.
Red is on her way to the Gulf Shores for spring break along with a group of 5 others, and they have decided to travel via RV, but things take a terrible turn when a sniper shoots out their tyres one by one at 10pm, with them being stranded until 6am, when one of them admits a secret that they’re hiding from everyone else.
As I said, this one didn’t give me the thrill I was hoping for, and I felt that the reveal didn’t hold much shock factor, even though our narrator comes across as unreliable. Red, to me, is a paranoid young person who has had a hard life compared to the friends she is travelling with; she is nothing like her privilledged friends, and she sees the world how it really is. I also feel like there was a lot missing from Red’s story, almost like we didn’t get to know her as much as you should a main character.
I love the fact that this story is told over real time, which means is has to be fast paced in order to stay true to the time setting, which I’m grateful for, I flew through this one, hence why I was able to finish it before the new year and get a head start on my 23 in 23 goal!
No matter what negative aspects I have spoken about, of course I am still super excited for Holly’s
All the love,
Jade x
Tea Stains and Book Spines 