Tell Me What Really Happened is a young adult crime drama. It’s a bit unique as it is told in first person through a series of police interviews.

A group of friends go on a camping trip, although none of them seem very excited to participate. While camping, Maylee goes missing.

Here are the interviewees…

Petra is Maylee’s best friend since Kindergarten. She has experience in the great outdoors as she was the only girl in her boy scout troop, and her daddy is a cop.

Nolan is Petra’s brother and Bigfoot expert who believe Bigfoots are behind all disappearances. He is extremely unreliable and the Bigfoot references became quite wearisome.

Abigail is also capable in the outdoors, thanks to her survivalist father. She is there for an underlying reason.

John is Maylee’s boyfriend, who is sceptical from the beginning of this rushed camping trip. John is the only person of color in the group.

Due to the format and the personalities that came out in their police interviews, I really connected with the characters. When people, especially teens, are placed under that kind of pressure, their true character is revealed and watching these characters slowly disclose themselves over the course of the book was my favorite aspect of the writing. .

The plot is a bit predictable, yet enjoyable.

Recommend to YA mystery/crime readers.

This was a quick read, that had me turning pages fast. After a bit, it was more hate reading than anything because I literally despised the main character. I mean, it made me feel strongly about a character, which is a sign of good writing. I kind of enjoyed the writing style of this. It was set up as a transcript of police interviews with the teenagers telling their stories. Add in potential sightings of a Bigfoot, and I am in! Overall, a good story.

Five teenagers went camping in the woods with no cell service. Four came back out. Maylee is missing. A gun shot, a Bigfoot stalking them, and everyone keeping secrets from each other, this story is a complicated tale that takes a while to unravel.

I was so intrigued by this book and I did enjoy the plot. The mystery kept dragging me forward and I did think about it a lot. My major issue was with the format. I love a good alternative book format but this one was just not it for me. It was told with the interview question at the top of each chapter with “subsections” of the characters answers in an interview. It was a cool format but I kept forgetting what the question one or where exactly we were at in the timeline. Now if you can get passed the format the mystery was super interesting but it did make it hard for me.

What a confusing and yet intriguing story told via first person during police interviews. As you put things together, can you figure out what happened?

Can you trust your memory of events when you can’t remember what exactly happened? Five went in and only four came out.

I recommend this book to those who like YA mysteries and everyone else.

This was a good read. Five high school students go on an overnight camping trip, and one of them dies. The story is told as each of the survivors tell their story to investigators. Their stories reveal personalities, high school angst, a Black student's aversion to the police, our obsession with social status, and a couple who is reluctant to admit they are gay. The only disappointment was that we were left wondering if there were any consequences for what happened. Young adults will like this one. I received an arc from NetGalley and was under no encouragement for a positive review.

Ramona Thompson

Chelsea Sedoti writes a mesmerizing young adult mystery in Tell Me What Really Happened. Part of the intrigue is her use of only the voices of the four friends of Maylee, the murder victim, as they answer interrogation questions in solitary first person police interviews. Maylee winds up dead when the group of teenagers makes a camping trip to a remote area that has a reputation for mysterious happenings. Maylee’s murderer has to be one of the other four people on the trip.
In an interesting setup, each chapter begins with the interrogator’s question. Answers come from Petra who has a controlling personality and claims to be Maylee’s best friend, her stepbrother Nolan who is sure they will find Bigfoot in the area, Abigail who got an unexpected invitation to join the group on this trip, and John who is Maylee’s boyfriend. Needless to say, the answers do not always coincide. They do reveal the well-drawn characters of each member of the group, all of them suspects.
The answers of these suspects reveal true teenage character types and anxieties along with poor choices as they struggle to ease the angst that goes with that time of life. The reader gets caught up in those as well as in the mystery of whodunit. I found the technique of writing the story in this format equally intriguing to solving for the guilty party.

I loved this one. I love how it was told via police interviews with each person. It was so unique and still held my interest. More than once I held my breath in anticipation. It flowed beautifully. The characters are likeable. Full of twists and turns and suspense! Each character brings a unique perspective to the story. I’ve never read anything like this. Each perspective was almost its own story. Absolutely brilliant!

What starts out as an interrogation amongst friends becomes a look back on the past 24 hours that they have spent in the woods, except one of them is missing. As the police question Petra, John, Nolan and Abigail on the events surrounding the disappearance of their friend Maylee, secrets begin to unfold and we realize things are not always what they seem. Where is Maylee and will they find her before it’s too late?

I really enjoyed reading Tell Me What Really Happened in part due to its unusual format. Told through a series of police interviews, the mystery slowly unravels.

| loved how we got multiple POVs with this due to the interview format, and we got to see scenes through different perspectives. In particular, I found it interested reading the differences - one character would say another said this, and the other would refute that in their own police transcript.

I had sort of guessed the "twist” of the mystery, but didn't fully quess it - which I enjoyed. I think it was well put together.
I also liked how a lot of these characters weren't sympathetic.

In fact, I found some of them downright insufferable (Petra, mostly) and yet, Sedoti was able to draw out empathy from me for each of them. That's no easy feat, especially considering the structure style of this novel.

Overall, I found this an enjoyable, fast paced, intense read.

A group of 5 teens went into the woods but only 4 came out…

“Tell Me What Really Happened” is a newly released YA book about a group of teens who go on a last minute camping trip to Salvation Creek despite all the many stories and legends of people going missing. Each teen has their own opinion as to what really happened to the victims but they aren’t going to let anything stop them from their overnight camping trip. What was supposed to be a fun time with friends, quickly turns into sarcastic banter, disagreements and arguing. In the middle of the night, one teen goes missing but no one knows where she went or what happened to her. Will they work together to figure it out or will they turn against each other to clear their name?

Sedoti did an incredible job in creating a story told entirely through first person police interrogations. Each chapter starts out with a question from the police and then the question is answered from each character's point of view. She did an amazing job at developing the characters…each one so different and likable in their own complicated, messy and complex way! A test of true friendship as lies and dark secrets start to slowly unravel. Do they know each other as well as they thought?

I laughed out loud several times while reading and was constantly second guessing myself while trying to figure out what really happened. It kept me interested all the way to the last page. This is one of those dark and twisted stories that you just can't put down!


Thank you to NetGalley, Sourcebooks Fire and Chelsea Sedoti for gifting this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Five friends go into the woods, only four make it out alive. You may think you know this story, but I assure you, you've never heard it told like this!

In this story we're following five high school friends, Nolan, Petra, Maylee, John and Abigail. It's a sort of Breakfast Clubby set-up, with each character falling into a particular stereotypical role.

Maylee is the Queen Bee of the group, a wannabe influencer, snapping shots of herself whenever and wherever she can. It's her idea to go on this ill-fated camping trip. Petra is Maylee's best friend, a smart girl, who tells it like it is. She's the only person who doesn't bow down to Maylee. Petra loves her, but she's not going to be steamrolled by her.

The other campers include Nolan, Petra's step-brother, an outcast with a penchant for cryptid lore, who always manages to say the wrong thing; Abigail, the poor girl-next-door, who isn't really part of the group, and John, Maylee's boyfriend, the jock with a heart of gold.

The trip begins with stress and ends very much the same way, x10. They're at each other's throats from the start and it's clear that something is going to go wrong.

The shining star of this book is hands-down the format. Told strictly through police interviews, I was blown away by how much tension Sedoti was able to create with that. Each chapter begins as a question asked by the investigators. The subsequent meat of the chapter is the various players answering that question.

Most interesting to me was how that initial question, at the header of each chapter, is the only question revealed, but you can feel the characters filling in subsequent questions. I'm not quite sure how else to describe it. It's definitely something you need to experience for yourself. I was super impressed with how clever this was.

Sedoti not only set the entire stage, but filled it in just by flawlessly placing answers to a few questions. It had to be perfectly arranged in order for it to flow well and make sense. I think she did a phenomenal job with that.

Overall, I found this to be a very fun read. It was grand how this unique format could create such a super quick and tense read. The characters drew me in. They felt believable and genuine in their distress.

It's not a groundbreaking story as far as the plot goes. Sadly, I even sort of felt like the conclusion was a bit anti-climatic in comparison with the build-up. Nevertheless, this was still a very engaging reading experience and I would definitely recommend it to fans of YA Thrillers.

Thank you so much to the publisher, SOURCEBOOKS Fire, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I was impressed with this and look forward to picking up more from this author!

Thank you Sourcebooks and Netgalley for a copy of this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Let me start off by saying THIS BOOK HAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL. I was absolutely hooked from the very beginning of the book. The interview format of the book made it feel like I was flying through chapters. This would be a great audiobook with multiple narrators. Now, everything fell flat for me in the last 10% of the book. The ending made me go "meh." I was let down and disappointed at the tie-up at the end. There was also way too much emphasis on Bigfoot throughout the entire book.

I think the author has so much future potential, but the ending of this book knocked my overall star rating down quite a bit.

I really enjoyed the way this book went back and fourth between 4 different people but it would all be happening at the same time so when you went from one person to the next, you were able to use what you learned from the first person to understand what the next person was saying. It was really well done!

Looking for an intriguing fast-paced police procedural drama that combines missing persons, cryptozoology, coming-of-age, and who-done-it? Then, look no further than Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti!

This young adult mystery was a true page-turner! A group of five friends, who at times seem to be more "frenemies" than friends, go on a camping adventure, quickly finding themselves trying to unravel a missing person case. They've camped in a stretch of woods where several mysterious disappearances have taken place over the years. Several theories have floated around town, but none of which have been proven. Despite this knowledge, five teens go out, only four come back, and the four that remain each have their own story recalling what happened in those woods.

Tell Me What Really Happened is unique in the combination of themes woven seamlessly through the pages but also in the manner in which the story unfolds. The entire story is told in first-person, sharing conversations between the adventuring teens and police detectives, interviewing each in regard to their recollections of the events that unfolded during their camping trip.

This is the first time I have read a book told via first-person police interviews, so I went into this somewhat skeptical but I was thrilled with the outcome. This writing style really lends itself to how expertly the drama of the teenager's experiences was revealed, making this book quite the page-turner. My original concern was that this writing style would make it difficult to follow the storyline and I was pleased to find myself fully immersed in trying to figure out what actually happened before the truth was revealed.

I would recommend this book to those who enjoy crime dramas, coming-of-age stories, solving mysteries, and adventure. While this is a young adult book, it can easily be enjoyed by adults and kept me intrigued along the way. There are romantic situations within the pages, but nothing graphic and I would say this book would be appropriate for most upper middle-grade and older audiences.

But, what REALLY happened in those woods during their camping trip?... You'll have to read this book to find out!

3 stars for Tell Me What Really Happened

This story is written in the first person point of view and told from the perspective of a few teenagers. The story is told via interrogations, and for this reason, I had difficulty getting into it. The back and forth of all the interrogations made the story seem very disjointed.

Overall, a good book with a good plot. The style of writing just may not be for everyone. I recommend you at least give it a chance though!

I didn't get into the book's format; it took me a bit to actually read this book. I kept putting it down and picking it back up again. Four teenagers, one integration room. The question is, who killed whom? Was it Bigfoot, or was it someone else? I really liked how the author built everything up, and then bam, it was like, oh snap, I didn't see that part coming.
Teenagers in the forest that is isolated, alcohol, you know it might not be a good combination. Something has to happen.
I think my students will like this. I would say it is better for maybe 8th grade and up. It was clean, nothing graphic, and so that was nice.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley!

Teens go camping in the woods. One doesn't return. This is told through multiple POVs of interrogations. I thought the story was fast paced and easy to read. Sometimes I got the characters confused, but everything wrapped up nicely. I really like the format!

This book was told in the first person in the form of an interrogation. I didn’t think I would enjoy that, but I did.

This was a really quick read and I read it in one sitting. It definitely kept me interested.

I didn’t really enjoy the ending and it felt very abrupt.

Only four teenagers return after five of them went camping in the woods. They each have a different perspective of things that happened that night, but who was guilty?

My favorite thing about the book was that it was written as an interrogation by the police with each character. You got to see each characters relationship and how those played into the night in the woods. This was a quick read for me, and I was surprised by the ending.

Such a clever premise! This YA thriller was told from the viewpoint of four teenagers in interview style format. Each of them has a different perception of how the events occurred. Each of them knows something the others don't. Each of them potentially has a motive. Yet each of them insists they didn't do it. And each of them is devastated by the disappearance of their friend.

The layout of this story was well-done. It felt like a fact finding mission but you still got insight to the emotions each of the teenagers was experiencing. It was easy to see how not only the secrets that crept out over the course of the evening impacted them all but also the creepy woodsy surroundings and noises had them all on alert. Then add in some booze and a gun and you had a recipe for disaster. This one keeps you guessing until the end.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntarily chose to read and review it and the opinions contained within are my own.