I love this cover! It was giving creepy vibes right away. However, that feeling quickly deflated within the pages.

The whole pacing of the book was out of balance with majority in the back half throwing it all at you. The premise of this book was super interesting. Hide & Seek but make it competitive! When things turn deadly the game changes....or was it ever really that to begin with.

This felt YA still even though it isn't marketed as such.

Fourteen people are selected to play in a high-stakes competition of hide and seek for a $50,000 prize at an abandoned amusement park. Part of the rules are that you must hide all day while returning to a base camp at night. The Winner will be crowned after a week, with two players eliminated each day. Once inside though, the contestants learn the stakes are much higher.

Honestly, this one was kinda meh for me. The beginning seemed promising, but the pacing seemed to slow down dramatically and I found myself getting bored with it. Also, the POV shifts frequently between characters without warning, which I found to be jarring and at times, confusing. We also don't really get to know the characters too well because of the constant switching.

Mack, the main character was fairly likable, as well as Ava (there are two Avas, which doesn't really help). I didn't really feel connected to any of these characters though. I read that this is the author's adult debut, so I'd be willing to give them another chance as this plot had promise, it just fell short.

My thanks to Random House, Del Rey, author Kiersten White, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

I'm not sure exactly why, but I had a really difficult time getting into this book. I was not gripped and so I did not finish it.

This was a quick and easy read, although I did struggle to keep all the characters straight in the beginning. There were a few creepy moments, but I mostly didn't feel like the abandoned amusement park setting delivered what I was hoping. Also, the main character was a little annoying.

Mostly, though, I'm just not a fan of the whole eldritch/cosmic horror thing, so it wasn't my cup of tea. But I would definitely read other titles by the same author.

Unfortunately, this one just didn't do it for me as much as I'd hoped. I liked the premise of a game and theme park and mystery, but I felt like the execution of this was off. The characters and story felt very much younger than they were supposed to be, which I can sometimes look past, but not here, where it's repeatedly mentioned that they should have certain adult feelings/experiences while also coming across as teenagers. It was just a little too jarring for me, which didn't make the reading experience very pleasant.

This is such a creepy book with a mystery that is right up my alley! The abandoned theme park setting and premise of spending the night here to earn a big prize really drew me in. It’s a unique story with lots of scares that I really enjoyed.

Boy this really started out with a lot of promise. I thought I was reading a book similar to The Long Walk. Interesting characters, rich vibrant setting, unique deadly contest. But that’s where everything halted. So much got put into the history that it took you right out of the game.

This was somewhat of a mixed bag. I thought the writing was very average, but with strong flawed characters and an overall well developed plot. Fourteen people join a hide and seek competition for the chance to win $50,000. Mack, who survived her family’s slaughter as a kid, knows better than anyone how to hide, so she figures she has a good chance of winning. However, not too long into the competition, she and the others realize this isn’t an ordinary competition and those looking to seek them are very much out to get them.

Nothing earth shattering. It’s a good venture into the horror genre for those who are easily scared as there wasn’t anything spooky here. Again, the characters were good but the writing was all over the place and had unnecessary references to true events that only served to take me out of the story. But I did enjoy it. It was fast paced and kept me guessing. I am curious about the author’s next adult horror book and think she has a lot of potential to grow within the genre.

I loved this book. The idea of a hide and go seek championship is fun and full of potential for horror which this book takes advantage of. I loved how each character had interesting back story especially the main female character. Although, the same thing played out for days it was never the same thing. It was full of surprises that kept unravelling the deeper you went in. Somethings were left a mystery. The ending was satisfying.

Definitely loved the theme and the plot of this book. Woman at the edge of society gets a one-in-a-million invite to a game of hide and seek with a massive prize at the end! I really love how characters were approached, as we got snippets from each person as they progressed through getting to the hide-and-seek game and moving through the story - this allowed me to get closer and closer to the characters who last longer in the game and get more invested in their outcome. White is clearly skilled in building suspense, slowly releasing details and images of the true nature of the "game". I was definitely invested. That being said, (and I am rarely ever one to use this phrase) this book just had a ton of virtue-signaling that contributed zero to the plot. Even for someone who seems to share White's political views, it all felt very heavy-handed and forced. I also didn't get a sense that characters' motivations and reactions were believable. While I wouldn't read it again, I am still glad I did once. A compelling and interesting story, no doubt.

DNF at 27% Couldn't connect to the story, was bored and didn't like the characters, plus i think for me there were too many POVS.

I absolutely ADORED this book, so imagine my surprise to check online and see so many bad reviews! I’m shocked. Hide grabbed me from the first chapter and did not let me go until I turned the last page. Literally, this was a one sitting read for me. I loved the cast of characters, I loved the setting, I LOVED the premise, and I couldn’t get enough of the nonstop action. An easy 5 star read for me. More like this, please!

I listened to this book on audio and had mixed views on it. I liked the premise very much, and thought it sounded like a fun horror romp. It was mostly exactly that. The characters was where this book fell short for me. Once the game in the park starts, you realize how little you care about the characters as they die. Without that attachment to the characters, you start rooting for the monster.

Read this book if you loved playing hide and seek as a kid and want to see how the horror movies would do it. A thrilling ride in an unforgettable setting. Kiersten White is an amazing author!

What an amazing ending!! This was such a fun read, lots of action and interesting commentary. I didn’t connect deeply with the main character, but it was a nice range of characters and I would definitely recommend it to my students looking for something Hunger Games adjacent.

This was quite the ride! Interesting set up, decent character development, and a twist. I was rooting for Mack from the very beginning but then other characters took hold and I became invested in them as well.

Fourteen people participate in a mysterious competition for a chance to win a life-changing amount of money. The challenge: to hide in a decrepit amusement park, and not get found out. But what the hiders don’t know is the true nature of the seeker…

One of the worst ‘hot takes’ I ever read on the Internet was a post positing that there must be a limited number of souls to go around to all the billions of people on Earth, and that most people must therefore be NPCs – didn’t that explain why so many people nowadays were so bland, so boring, such utter wastes of space?

I imagine the author of this learned theory must of course think themselves to number among those who matter.

Anyway, it made me very mad, which was why I found this book so cathartic.

This is a quick read, pretty fast-paced. The plot itself was fairly straightforward -a story of survival in a creepy amusement park, a dark past to unravel – and most of the time I generally knew what was going to happen next, though the specifics did often surprise me. I came to like the central characters, even if I never became particularly attached to any of them. Despite the large cast, the reader eventually gets a handle on at least the personalities of all the contestants. What I really enjoyed, though, was the thematic underpinnings of the story, which become gradually clearer in the first half of the book before utterly ambushing you in the second.

The author interrogates the idea of ‘usefulness,’ discusses the way we decide who matters and who doesn’t, and then butts back against it. She argues that all of the contestants, who are mostly dismissed by even the reader as dull and irritating, have their own worth as individuals – not because they have some hidden ability or important backstory, but because they have as much right to the world as anyone else in the book. It’s a refreshing perspective, and unexpected in how it clashes the characterizations in most books, where where the main character is generally the main character because there is something that sets them apart from everyone around them.

However, I don’t know if the style of writing quite agreed with me, as it felt a little distant, reduced the immediacy of what the characters were doing and feeling. I also did not quite buy the blossoming of a romantic relationship between Mack and Ava, as it felt rather sudden and rootless – what draws the two of them together that wasn’t present between Mack and any of the other characters? I feel that it would have worked just as well as a friendship, and been more realistic that way.

This was incredibly hard to get into and I didn't care about any of the characters. It seemed pretty cliche even from the start.

I wanted to love this but unfortunately it wasn't for me. Looking forward to seeing what else Kiersten writes in the adult space, but the characters and writing ended up being a bit young feeling. I know adults make stupid choices all the time, but these characters made young and sometimes naive choices that don't align with life experiences.

I would have liked to see some more character development from side characters who carried the plot action on their back, but it was a fun read all in all.