DNF at 53%.

I love White's YA books (especially the And I Darken series) but was way too slow for me, and I'm not invested enough in any of the characters to continue.

Hide sounded so good on paper. I mean, a competition for fifty-thousand dollars in an abandoned amusement park between people down on their luck…that turns deadly? Tell me you’re not instantly intrigued.
Unfortunately, it didn’t quite pan out that way. We mostly follow Mac, a girl with a traumatic past who needs the money in order to make a life for herself. We also get to see perspectives from the other characters. And I don’t know if it was the writing style, or if there were just way too many people for this short book but I felt like most of them were just paper-thin characters.

ANYWAYS ONTO BRANDON. Brandon was my favorite character throughout the entire book because he’s just genuinely kind! And sweet! And is the ultimate cinnamon roll! I’m pretty neutral on most of this book but Brandon? Nah, he gets a whole paragraph dedicated to him because I love him so much.

I was definitely entertained by most of this book, but I never really felt gripped by it. I certainly don’t hate it either though? I’m in the dreaded neutrality purgatory which means that this review lacks the passion of a 5 star or a 1 star read. It’s just…meh. Great setting, never really feels boring, but also is pretty forgettable as far as the characters and plot are concerned. I don’t even know what my rating is. 2.75/5 stars? I’d definitely suggest this if you enjoyed White’s previous books, such as The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, because she’s great at writing atmosphere!

A huge thank you to the publisher for an e-ard in exchange for an honest review!

I really wanted to love this book a lot more than I did. Here we follow a group of strangers playing “hide-and-seek” for money. They think it’s just a simple game, but they don’t realize there’s something more sinister going on.

I loved the premise here and really thought I was going to love this. There were so many characters than I had to make a character chart, it didn’t really matter though because some of them aren’t in for too long… some of these characters were enjoyable to read about though!

I recommend going into this as blind as possible, I unfortunately read a Goodreads review beforehand and it spoiled the ‘twist’. I personally didn’t like that ending, but I still wish it wasn’t spoiled. It was still a fun read though!

Thank you Del Rey and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I loved the premise of this book as well as the execution. The story follows fourteen very different young people as they engage in a competitive hide and seek game to win a prize if 50,000 dollars. The game is set in an abandoned amusement park and quickly it becomes clear that everything is not what it seems. I loved the characters; they were well developed and dimensional and I found myself caring about all of them. The plot was well explained and the atmosphere was thick and moody. The symbolism (which I won’t go into to avoid spoilers) was poignant and not heavy handed. I also really enjoyed reading the acknowledgements at the end of the book. I will look for more from Kiersten White!

Thanks to Random House Ballantine and NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I can’t compare it to one of my favorite horror movies because ~spoilers~. But oh my GOD this book was made for me. An extremely fun read, I loved the tone, I loved the message the author was trying to convey.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Del Rey Books for this ARC. I’m buying a physical copy the moment it comes out.

I was so looking forward to this book and enjoy Kiersten White however this one fell flat for me. Way too many POV changes where I didn’t feel like I could get to know the characters. A really great start but ended up with a rocky finish.

The offer is irresistable and oh so easy … spend 7 days & nights in an abandoned amusement park, keep hidden, don’t be discovered and if you are the winner, the prize is $50,000. Fourteen people received invites. Fourteen desperate people will do anything to win.
From the get-go a few of them gleefully sabotage some of the others so they are removed from the competition. Others go it alone. Still others prefer companionship and form small groups. The first three days pass uneventfully. Each day two people lose and are removed from the park.
The fourth day proves interesting. So far nobody has seen the people searching for them but a couple of contestants swear they heard footsteps and some sort of sniffling sound. Also, before the fourth day ends, they hear a woman screaming like she is terrified. Her screams suddenly cut off. When the remaining contestants meet back at the camp later that night, some of them believe things are not what they’ve been told and they want to leave but with the gate closed and electric fencing surrounding the park, there is no way out of this nightmare.

This book is Kiersten White’s first adult novel and it is a winner! It is a sinister, twisted book … like something out of the early writings of Dean Koontz. This book covers themes like entitlement, greed, and trust. The pacing kept me on the edge of my seat breathlessly turning the pages. Up to the ending I was cheering on the remaining contestants. The ending was extremely satisfying. People who like David vs Goliath stories and good triumphs over evil will revel in this wonderful book.

Robyn Heil, Buyer for Brodart Co.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author and while I really enjoyed her writing style, I admittedly had higher (darker?) expectations going into it.

14 contestants have been selected to compete in a high stakes hide and seek game set in an abandoned amusement park that is built like a maze. They are given a short list of rules and a ration of supplies to last them a week. The competitors must hide from sun up to sun down, and each day ends with 2 contestants being found. They have no idea how many seekers there will be, but they are told to stay hidden until the sun goes down, no matter what. What starts off as a friendly competition to walk away with a cash prize soon turns into a fight to stay alive.

We mostly follow Mack, a survivor of major childhood trauma. She is in and out of shelters and down on her luck when she is approached about the hide and seek competition. She is reluctant to sign on, but being completely alone in the world she feels like she is out of options. She goes into the competition intent to keep her head down, remain invisible, and keep her eye on the prize. As it becomes apparent there is a more sinister force at play, she forms alliances with a few others and in just a few short days she is willing to put her life on the line to save her new found friends.

While I really enjoyed the premise, I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t completely hit the horror mark for me. The pacing was a bit rushed and I wish there was more focus on their experiences while hiding. There was such potential for it to go a bit darker , but it read a more like a YA novel. I feel like there may have been too many characters , half of which were written with the intent to be throw away characters. Other than a few snippets of memories, we don’t really get enough focus on the main characters backgrounds and even the origin story for the game itself is kind of glossed over.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC

Mack is a young woman, friendless, homeless, consumed with guilt and nowhere to turn. Against her better judgement, she enters into a reality show-like competition of Hide and Seek in which she and 13 other competitors will hide for a week in an abandoned amusement park. The last to be found will win fifty thousand dollars. Everyone wants the money but some need it more desperately than others. Some are hoping this will be a stepping stone to fame and wealth, others just hope it will lead to a more normal life.
The synopsis intrigued me, but even though I knew there would be 14 competitors in this deadly game I was not entirely prepared to meet them all. It's a lot to keep track of, but fear not, many of them are throwaway characters that are only here to be killed off, while others are there in case you need someone to hate in order to know who you're rooting for.
I did wonder why it had to be a week and what they would do if thirteen competitors were found before then, but that is sort of explained later.
I was expecting a slasher in the woods story, but that is not exactly what I got.
It becomes increasingly clear to the contestants that there is something off about this competition but with no means of contacting help all they can do is try to survive.
There are frequent changes in point of view which was sometimes confusing but these become fewer as more contestants are eliminated.
I loved the setting, and descriptions of the run down park, with creepy skeletal remains of rides and concession stands, but sometimes the descriptions of finding a hiding spot and basically staying there all day gave me the urge to skim.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 out of 5 where half stars are not an option.

This is listed under adult fiction and horror on Netgalley but gives off more YA thriller vibes in my opinion. The beginning was engaging, but the pace slows down early on. I also wish that the characters had more dimension to them. I like the premise and the attempt at social commentary, but I unfortunately had several issues with the execution.

Where to start with this review? I really enjoyed the premise of the book and I grew to care about some of the characters, although there were to many of them. The change in POV was sometimes confusing and I had to go back and double check whose perspective we were hearing from more than once. The ending was a little disappointing and could have been fleshed out more, but all in all I really enjoyed my time reading the book.

Fourteen contestants are taken to an abandoned amusement park where the goal is simply to not be found over the course of one week. Two people will be caught each day and the last person found will claim a $50,000 prize. This sounds easy, but little do the competitors realize that this simple game of hide and seek has deadly results.

This book definitely had some Squid Game meets The Hunger Games vibes. It is relatively fast paced and had an interesting backstory of the games itself. There were many competing points of view, including changes of POV in the same paragraph, which was a bit confusing at times. Since this is an e-ARC, I’m hoping it won’t actually appear this way in the final product. Many of the characters are so shallow and one dimensional that I never felt connected to them and didn’t care that they were being hunted. I did like the concept of the game itself and would have loved to have had more information about the creators themselves. I also liked how there was some social commentary in here as well about classism and racism. It really has a powerful message about generational wealth/ privilege and who really pays for the advantages that certain people/ families have in life.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The premise of the book drew me in but once I started reading it, I just couldn’t get into it at all.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

I've read Kiersten White books before, specifically THE DARK DESCENT OF ELIZABETH FRANKENSTEIN and AND I DARKEN (I will eventually go on in the series, I just need to be ready to be totally emotionally destroyed), and I have loved what I've read. I like how she takes well known and loved stories and subverts their themes, and how she brings unique perspectives in, and HIDE is no exception. This is her first foray into adult fiction, and hooray for it being horror themed! I liked the careful and eerie build as the various contestants in a high stakes hide and seek game start to slowly be picked off in a creepy abandoned amusement park, and I liked how White brings in themes of not only class warfare and how the haves take from the have nots, but also the harkening to Greek mythology and how she implements it in this setting (no spoilers). I also liked how she handled the characters, as not only did we get some good characterization and exploration through the likes of Mack, we also get a glimpse into each contestant at least for a bit so we can get a sense of who they are.. . which ups the ante all the more.

I thought that HIDE was creepy and suspenseful, and also a good jump from YA to adult genre fiction for White. I had a fun time reading it and I think that horror fans, teens and adults alike, will enjoy it too.

Hide by Kiersten White is a horror-thriller about 14 strangers who signed up to participate in a week-long Hide & Seek contest in an abandoned theme park. The rules are you have to hide from sun-up to sun-down; last one left wins a life-changing cash prize. Little do these contestants know, the real deal with this contest is much more sinister...

Note: This review contains SPOILERS!

The first half of this book was incredible - I enjoyed reading the story from the perspective of each of the contestants and I found the plot to be genuinely scary. The main character, Mack, had a very dark and traumatic back-story that was nightmare-inducing. The mystery behind who would get caught and what exactly was seeking the contestants was very engaging and perfectly written to instill a sense of fear in the reader. But in the end, it kind of fell flat. The story is based on a Greek myth (I won't tell you which one!). But once I discovered the connection and the book revealed the seeker, along with the truth behind the contest, I kind of lost interest. The unknown elements that made the book scary and mysterious were gone and I felt confident the remaining characters would escape, especially since one of them couldn't fall victim to the seeker at all.

What I really found interesting was the author's use of the competition to make a point about generational wealth and white privilege. The characters running the competition are exploiting minorities and the impoverished in order to maintain their wealth and good fortune. I think the point is fairly well-made without overshadowing the main plot of the book.

Overall, I found this to be a solid read. Most of the story is dark and mysterious, but I thought the ending was unremarkable. I would still rate this book 4-stars, as I enjoyed most of the book and I appreciated the unique premise.

Content Warnings: gore, murder, racism, violence, gun violence, suicide

The concept: 14 people are brought to an abandoned amusement park to play a game of hide and seek. The winner gets 50,000 and the losers...well...

Let the Hunger Games comparisons begin! No, but seriously, this is an excellent Hunger Games or Squid Game readalike. I mean (and this is a low-key spoiler, but I guessed it very quickly and you probably will too if you are at all familiar with what I'm talking about), the Hunger Games and Hide are based on the same Greek myth, so there really are a lot of parallels. The book is a little slow to start, but once it picks up, it goes pretty fast - I read the last half or so in one morning. There's some surprise messaging about how Baby Boomers have screwed everything up and then blame us (Millennials and Gen Z) for it, so I enjoyed that and think the Gen Z and Alpha folks will too. My one sort of big complaint is that the book kind of focuses on all the characters (there is arguably one "main" character) and so I didn't really care about any of their fates. That said, I think teens (especially relunctant readers) will eat this up. Hand it to fans of the aforementioned properties or The Maze Runner or really anything in that dystopian competition zone. 3.5 stars - I more than liked it. :)

I think this is one of my top reads of the year! I was only mildly concerned as to how Kiersten's first adult book would turn out, but truly, this was the perfect summer horror! There's this sense of dread the whole time, and it works so so so very well. The reveals along the way are so fun.

I generally enjoyed this book quite a lot, but I think it could have benefitted from some streamlining and some harder authorial choices (spoilers ahead) - for example, in this sort of slasher-adjacent narrative it's necessary to choose between a point of view limited to the protagonist, which ratchets up tension, and one that's either broader or limited to either the victims or the killer, which allows the reader to see the "kills" and have more information than the protagonist - this seemed to pick a middle way in a sort of haphazard way and it gave a bit of a muddled feel. (Whatever happened to the graffiti artist? Did I miss how he died?) I appreciated the Scooby Doo reveal (it's always rich old white people) and liked the characters and setup, I just think a really hard edit would have served the book well. And perhaps it would have been a good choice to make the townies not QUITE so cartoonishly evil - if the sacrifices benefitted anything in the world but these horrible people the choices would have been a lot more interesting. It's also hard to do exposition in a book where the protagonist has no way of getting a lot of this information but the reader needs it - it does bring the momentum to a halt every time the narrative leaves the park, however. Yay for daytime evils though!

That was a ride I didn't know I needed (pun intented).
I rarely read horror, not because I don't like but because I like other genres more. Now this book? This book was a journey and I loved every part of it !
The characters we follow, their psychology, the hypocrisy of the antogonist who complains that no one wants to do honest work nowadays when she NEVER DID HONEST WORK IN HER LIFE. Shit, that was so good! There's a tiny love story in there, too, and I was never into insta love but based off the two characters back stories + the situation they're in, it actuallly maked sense and it was a soft interlude every now and then. It's not the center of the story but it does bring it forth and I loved it.

Also, when it comes to the writing, I had heard of Kiersten White but never read any of her books. And I can seriously say that I'm gonna read all of them now. I just loved her writing and the care she put into the story and into each characters that we follow through the book. It was amazing and I can only recommend this book, whatever genre you usually read! It has everything!

Weak finish to a strong, mysterious start. Spend a week hiding in an amusement park, as a challenge -- sure! The thrill of the story faded though, about 3 quarters of the way thru. Multiple characters that I kind of lost track of and a plot that, at least for me, was predictable.
I like the premise, I like the writing and I'd like to see what comes next from Ms. White in the future.
Would I recommend it? For a summer read - go for it.