Member Reviews
The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.
The prize: enough money to change everything.
Even though everyone is desperate to win—to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts—Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.
It’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.
But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.
Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
For lack of a better analogy coming to mind right now, I'd say Hide was mix between "Survivor" and "Friday the 13th". Fourteen twenty-somethings, including Mack, a runaway who's having troubles staying at a shelter, have been invited to a new reality TV-like contest. If they can spend seven days hidden in an old abandoned amusement park playing a version of Hide and Go Seek without being spotted, they'll win $50,000. As Mack and the other contestants reach the small town where the park is located, something seems off - the way they all fell asleep on the bus ride over, the odd mannerisms of the townspeople and the old woman who is their guide to the contest. And then there are the rules: by night you can stay camped at the pavilion inside the park where cots, showers and supplies are, but once the sun come up, all bets are off. You find good hiding spot or you get caught and are out of the game. As the contestants seek shelter in the remains of the park, entropy abounds with dilapidated buildings and rides and overgrown trees and ivies everywhere. Not to mention the strange maze-like layout of the park. And as the participants begin disappearing two per day, the big secret the town has held for generations is making itself known.
While it took me a few pages to get into the book, mostly due to the introduction of numerous characters and nominal background for the story, once it got going, the story really got going and became a real page turner. By about the 60% mark I couldn't wait to get to the end. Not because I was disliking it but because the tension was getting to me and I just had to know ho it ended. This was a fun, exciting novel, and I think fans of things like The Hunger Games, Battle Royale and Fantasticland will especially like it.
After watching Squid Game, I was excited to hear about this book and its survival game vibe. Thankfully NetGalley came through with an ARC, so here we are, checking it out early! I raced through this in two days flat because I was entertained by the story and found the characters to be really interesting. Rather than just follow our protagonist, you get into the head of most of the contestants to some degree to understand their backgrounds and motivations. I liked that that gave us a sense of more than just a simple good/evil dynamic.
Some parts were a little predictable, but overall, I found it to be a lot of fun. Dark, twisted fun.
Everyone has played hide and seek before, right? Well, no one has played the game quite like this before.
The main narrator is one of the chosen few to go play this highly competitive, very creepy game of hide and seek in a reality show type setting us add in a chance to win 50k!. Don't want to give too much away, but can definitely say Mack did not realize what she was getting into.
This was definitely a fast paced YA thriller, the author kept my attention and there were some surprising twists and turns....
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!
Hide focuses on a group of individuals picked for a simple competition of hide and seek in an abandoned amusement park. At the end, the person who wins is given 50,000, a life-changing amount of money for every competitor. They’re led to believe that this is simply a game of hide and seek, but Mack, our main narrator, begins to sense there is something very wrong with the park. This book was incredibly unsettling in the best possible way. Kiersten White had an incredible ability to build suspense. I loved that the book zoomed away from Mack during days of the completion to get the point of views of other competitors, this gave each character a more substantial feel and helped the book feel very grounded. It scratched the itch of The Hunger Games but with characters I could more relate to as they are closer to my age. I could not put this book down! I highly recommend Hide if you’re looking for a page turner that will send chills down your spine. You may never want to enter a theme park again. (Or play Hide and Seek.)
A dark, sinister game of Hide and Seek pushes the contestants to question their lives, their sanity and their reasons for joining the competition to begin with.
With fully-drawn characters and breakneck pace, Hide is just the sort of twisted thriller many readers will enjoy.
See full review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4389065752
I’m going to call this the thriller of the year. It’s an incredible story that keeps you interested until the last page. But my favorite part was the unique setting and the characters.
This was the first title by Kiersten White that I’ve read, but I’m curious enough to go seek out other things she’s written.
I’m a sucker for things set at amusement parks…the more run down the better. The setting of “Hide” was a character unto itself…and what’s hiding inside with them…even better.
I got some serious “Cabin in the Woods” with this one. Entertaining read.
A terrifically terrifying thriller.
This is my #1 pick for BuzzFeed Books list of most Anticipated Thrillers.
Thank you Del Rey team and NetGalley.