Go Hunt Me was such a fun read. I already knew I liked Kelly's writing and I was definitely sold with Romania and Dracula.

Alex and her friends are all into making movies/arts. They had been working on Alex's movie to use for college admissions. But Alex doesn't get in and is waitlisted. Her dad is sick and they're hurting for money. She doesn't know what to do. When she runs into her friend's neighbor that is an actress, things start to maybe fall into place. There is a Go Fund Me set up and the actress sees it and shares. She visits Alex's family and tells them that her cousin owns a castle in Romania, one that was Vlad the Impaler's. She agrees to take the kids there so that they can film something better. She has equipment and they have plenty of funding thanks for an anonymous donor. They're all excited. But the actress leaves them alone. The castle is creepy and has no internet or phone service. The cousin who owns it is weird and leaves. Alex feels like something is wrong. One of the friends goes missing and Alex sees someone in one of their Dracula masks. Lights that were on are turned off. They find random things like a lit cigar. When Alex goes to look for her friend, she finds blood on the door. The kids start to split up with different missions, but it doesn't go the way they hoped.

The book is told with investigation tapes and with Alex's story. It goes back in time and then goes forward quite a bit. The whole story unfolds with some pretty big twists. I thought I had it figured out, but I was wrong this time. I love when that happens.

I gave this book 4 1/2 stars rounded up to 5 on Goodreads.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my earc.

A group of student filmmakers get the opportunity of a lifetime when a famous actress decides to back their Dracula-inspired film project. Her support helps them crowdfund a bigger budget than they ever imagined, and she even hooks them up with the perfect filming location: the actual Romanian castle said to have inspired the original Dracula. However, when they arrive at the castle things are not quite right. They are stranded in the castle with no way to get ahold of the outside world, someone has stolen the money from their Gofundme account, and they soon realize they are not alone in the castle after all.

I wanted to like this, since I love Dracula, and I also really enjoyed the author's other book (Eat Your Heart Out). Unfortunately, it just fell a bit flat for me. The story doesn't take off until fully halfway through the book, they don't even arrive at the castle until about 40% in, and even with all that exposition time, the characters still felt flat and I didn't feel like I knew anything about any of them. This made it hard to feel afraid for them or care what happened to them in the castle, and once the action does pick up it all happens so fast that there is no real time to feel suspense or fear. The ending was interesting but didn't really do the rest of the story justice, and overall the read just didn't pan out for me.
It was still a cool concept and I'm sure other people might like it more than I did.

*Thank you to Penguin Teen for an ARC of this to review!

I will update the review with a link to our blog closer to publication date.
I'd like to thank the publisher Razorbill and netgalley for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

First of all, thank you so much to Penguin Teen for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

If we're all being honest, we love a good horror/thriller with some Bram Stoker vibes, so I was so excited to start this! I have been in a reading slump for weeks, and this book single-handedly pulledm e out of it! I read 20% of it one night, and then I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. the next night finishing it.

It's a quick read, incredibly fast-paced, and so intriguing! I loved the mystery and the set up and intrigue throughout! You're not completely sure what the twist is going to be, but I have my suspicions and was still blown away by the reveal!

Just cannot recommend this enough. So spooky, faced-paced and mysterious!

This is my first 5 star read of the year. I absolutely adored this book from cover to cover. It truly kept me on the edge of my seat until the very last page, I didn't want to stop reading and devoured this book so quickly. One of the very first things that drew me in was that all the main characters are horror movie fanatics - as am I. It is so fun when you find a book that not only is your favorite genre but also has characters that share the same interests as you. The way that this book was organized was also really enjoyable for me, it is cut up with little tidbits of information from the future in between each of the "chapters". I say "chapters" because it is more split up in few hour increments. Within these little chapter dividers, I really enjoyed how it would give you new information and make you confused all over again, it made it so much more fun to read. I also LOVE this authors writing style, she writes very detailed descriptions and doesn't shy away from writing super creepy or even sometimes gory descriptions.
As for the overall plots and characters, there are no complaints from me. I loved that certain characters were set up to be suspicious and some were just a little bit off which made you question them a little bit as well. I really felt like I was trying to solve something while reading this book. I always thought I had it, then something new would happen that made me rethink the whole thing which really kept me engaged with the story. If you are a fan of mysteries or thrillers I highly recommend this book, I truly loved every minute of it. "Go Hunt Me" is officially a contender for my favorite book of the year and I will be recommending it to everyone I see. This book was SO GOOD. Thank you Kelly DeVos!!!!

Book Review: Go Hunt Me by Kelly deVos

Okay... where do I start? I guess let's start with the plot. Go Hunt Me follows seven friends who are horror buffs, trying to make their own movie to help get them all admitted to film school after college. When their first movie falls flat for our main character, Alex, the friend group concocts a plan to go on their dream vacation to a remote castle in Romania, the castle were Vlad Dracul once lived. There, they plan to refilm their Dracula film and take it to another level of greatness. But, when they all begin to be killed one by one, their dream vacation turns into a nightmare and as the story unfolds, we begin to realize that everyone has a secret that nobody is willing to tell.

There is so much to unpack here. The summary states that this is a great read for fans of Diana Urban's All Your Twisted Lies and Dracula lovers, and at first, I could not see where one could elevate this book to the level of Urban's novel. There is a lot of set up in this book before it can begin the action, which is the first deceiving quality of this book. Before the reader can get to the major twist at the end of the book, it seems like this book is mediocre at best and not anywhere close to Urban's novel. However, when the final twist of the book is revealed, my mouth hit the floor and it all made sense as to how this book could be put on the same level as some of those great YA thrillers. deVos does an incredible job with red herons, faulty narratives, and keeping the real story hidden until the very last paragraph. The thrills and horror of this book actually had me so engrossed that when someone would walk into the room while I was reading, I loved how deVos used two different time narratives to tell the story. The reader gets to go along with our main character Alex as she recounts what happened on the vacation to an inspector, so the dual time narratives really adds another layer to the puzzle to keep you guessing of what really happened. I would jump. It reads super fast and the action makes the reading pace even quicker. I think my mouth is still on the floor, so I am going to go pick that up now and gives this a 5/5 star rating.

Upon reading the description of this book, I really thought this was going to be a slam dunk for me, but unfortunately, it ended up not being my cup of tea at all. I absolutely adore the cover and the premise, but the content itself just didn't live up to my expectations.

That's not to say there's nothing to enjoy here, so here is what I did like: I obviously totally loved the Dracula vibes. The MC and her friends love Dracula and the story of Dracula and travel to the historic castle of Vlad Dracul to make their own film, which is based on Bram Stoker's story. This saturation of a story I really enjoy into a modern novel was one of the most enjoyable aspects.

Additionally, since the story centers on a film the characters are making, I really liked the structure that they used, heading the chapters with interior and exterior indicators and location/setting at the head of the chapters as if it were flipping back and forth between a novel and a film script. I liked how they brought elements of film into the novel and brought that part of the story to life a little bit more.

I also thought it was cool that the characters were movie buffs, so there were lots of movie references throughout. Maybe not the movie references I would have used, as it seemed like there were film more comparable to the situation, but still, for fellow movie lovers, that will probably be a cool aspect.

Sadly, the dislikes for this one outweighed the likes. Despite being a mystery/thriller, it was so obvious from the very beginning what the outcome was going to be because I just felt like they were laying it on way too thick. It's almost like every line was delivered with a big, cheesy wink, which didn't seem intentional so much as clumsy, so it wasn't very fun reading the "twists" and the characters trying to figure everything out when it was pretty obvious from the jump what was going to happen. It had the effect of making it rather plodding and caused me to be pretty frustrated with the MC.

I also just felt that the characters in this book had absolutely no depth. Not a single one of them. It's difficult to get invested when the characters don't really come to life, and they never did. Even the narrator gives them nothing. These people are her best friends and at the beginning she describes them along the lines of, "Jax is the best boyfriend. Kenna is pretty. Maddie is a great makeup artist. Hazel is super smart," And from that point forward--that's all they get. They never develop beyond that. Seriously, Jax being a good boyfriend is his defining characteristic here. This may be a flaw in the fact that the MC is the one imparting this information to us and maybe this really is all she thinks of these people (at one point she has a moment of her life flashing before her eyes and her "best memories" of her friends include one of them dipping his French fries into a frosty and one of them setting up Instagram photo shoots, and I was like...these are your best memories of your closest friends?) but it didn't exactly make for a captivating read for me.

I don't mean to sound negative, and I am of course, incredibly grateful to Penguin Teen for sending for me an ARC of Go Hunt Me, but it didn't end up being a new favorite. There were pros and cons though, so perhaps the things I disliked will be relatable for other readers, and I wish the best of luck to the author with the release in June.

So, the beginning kinda had my attention, but also kind of didn’t. About half way through the book when the action picked up… wow did this get hard to put down.

The way everything connects is superbly done. And the twists are so hard to see. Though, the final one, I had a feeling about, though I didn’t call the reasoning.

The thriller aspects are definitely there. Movie buffs will also enjoy this with all the film and director mentions.

My only issues was the case stuff at the end of each chapter. Sometimes they were a good segue into the next chapter, sometimes they weren’t. Personally, I wouldn’t have had them in there at all.

The premise of this book is interesting, and once the action picks up (unfortunately fully halfway through the book), the pace is fast and the mystery at least kept me engaged! I had no idea what was going on at any point and wanted answers, I'll give it that much. Unfortunately, nothing else here worked for me. The characters were thin and annoying and had neither dimension nor development, and I couldn't keep them straight (and not even in a fun horror tropey kind of way; they just were irritating). The plot was nonsensical but tried to hard to be realistic and have good stakes, and the writing was incredibly messy. I know an arc is bound to have some typos in it, but the number here were staggering--at one point, "Maddie" was referred to as "Maggie," which made me question reality for several moments--and some of the grammar was loose at best (the number of sentence fragments that should have been dependent clauses; the strange mixing up of past and present tense; the repeated use of the phrase "accent of frustration"). I wanted to like this book a lot, but it didn't work for me. The fact that the first full half of the book was dedicated to cliche setup for characters I never understood, and then immediately snapped into breakneck poorly-paced action, also let me down a lot. At least it was fast, and I really did stay up late reading half of it in a sitting to see where it went, so it absolutely gets credit for that!

From the first paragraph, I knew this book would be a good one. I immersed myself into the book from the first chapter and I cannot say enough good things about this book! Honestly amazing! The writing is incredible and the plot is just one to die for. I am absolutely obsessed with this book. My favorite part would have to be the character development throughout the book. Character development is something I look forward to and this book did not disappoint.

What a wild ride. I picked this up thinking...I like vampires, why not? LOL. But, in reality, I think this lands more closely to my tastes of thrillers than it does vampires and it definitely moves into horror territory.

In all, this book is kind of like those slasher moves you watch thinking...what's going to happen next? Though you know it has to be that someone is dead. That's just how they are and this falls pretty well in line with that. A group of teens goes off to Romania to shoot a movie and their chaperone leaves them alone in a creepy castle. What could go wrong?

I would say that parts of it I wasn't connecting with the main character but I kind of look back now and understand why -- due to how it is written and just the overall intention of the book lends itself to that.

I couldn't put it down though - I had to know what happened next which is why I woulds say this get's a 3.8* from me. Almost a 4 but some of thew writing drew it down a little.

I'd recommend to those who like YA suspense/horror. Definitely a little bloody with a creep y setting that's just right and that ending...wow.

! Language and some described gore though not excessive.

My rating: 3.8*

Thanks to NetGalley for this gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

Go Hunt Me had such a cool storyline idea however it fell a little short for me. I loved the idea of film students going to Castle Prahova to film at the notorious Dracula's castle and there were great descriptions and it was definitely spooky at times! However, I knew the whole time there was nothing supernatural going on which was a bit disappointing. I will say I didn't see the twist at the end coming so that was a great surprise! My biggest issue with this book was that it felt like a teen rom com. I know the students were high schoolers but I just found myself annoyed with the immaturity and dialogue of the characters at times. Overall this really was a good read and the story itself is pretty creative. The author definitely does a good job with descriptions as well!