What a unique format for a mystery! Four teens being questioned by the police. Each chapter starts with the interrogation question as a header, and then the responses of the characters to whom the question relates are provided in first-person accounts. Each character’s unique qualities, perceptions of each other and their missing friend, and perspective on their camping trip that went awry shines through the writing. I really enjoyed the process of trying to get to the truth with the investigators and the teens in this story.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire, Netgalley, and the author for early access to this unique mystery.

Five friends leave for an overnight camping trip but only four return..

The story is told in police interviews as the four are questioned separately to explain the events leading up to and after Maylee’s disappearance. This was such an interesting format to tell this story and it did work, however it just fell flat for me, particularly the ending. I was expecting something more sinister but it really was anticlimactic and a let down.

My other main issue with the story was Nolan’s obsession with Bigfoot, I know it had a role to play but it just became tiresome pretty quickly.

It was a quick easy read though, I read it from start to finish in less than three hours.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3.5

This book had aspects I really enjoyed and others that I was very confused about. Five "friends" go on a camping trip in the secluded woods with no cell service and the one who invited them all ends up dead... Who did it?

One of the major positives was the multiple POVs. I liked hearing what happened that night from Abigail, Petra, John, and Nolan. It gave so much context and the reader is able to ty and piece things together as they read. I also enjoyed the interrogation format of the book, it made it a faster read. Both of these things helped keep me as a reader engaged in the story and reading in anticipation of finding who/what killed Maylee.

The ending is what annoyed me the most. I was filled with anticipation and then when I read what happened, it just fell flat. It felt like taking the easy way out plot wise. The slight twist regarding two characters also felt OOC for one of them. It was an extreme solution to Maylee's perceived issue. While I didn't love the ending, the last few things said by Petra were a great ending.

Five teenagers go camping at Salvation Creek but one goes missing. What really happened that night?

A fast paced young adult mystery told through first-person police interviews. I enjoyed the multiple POVs and how the story was formatted. Each chapter would start with a question asked by the detectives and then each character will answer below. I was kept at the edge of my seat trying to figure out what happened.

I would recommend to any reader who likes young adult mystery told through multiple POV who is okay with police transcript formatting.

I received an advanced readers copy from NetGalley and the publisher Sourcebooks Fire for an honest review.

Five friends go into the woods, but only four make it out ….

Salvation Creek, known for its creepy folktales and missing person stories, specially young women is not the ideal camping spot. But Maylee thinks otherwise and convinces her four friends to accompany her to the creek.

What they planned to be a fun night camping adventure, with fire, marshmallows, drinking, fooling around turned into a disaster by midnight. Maylee is missing, and someone brought a gun to the camp.

Now the four teens are being interrogated in separate rooms. They all are suspects, all have something to hide and something to share. As the interrogation proceeds, every flashback brings a new twist and a possible motive against each to harm Marley.

Entirely told in first person police interviews of four teens over the course of a few hours. With each chapter as a new question for them to answer. The unique writing style is fast-paced, gripping and makes you feel part of the interrogation room.

Devoured it in one sitting but still left wondering where everything went wrong. Could have been a five star read but the end definitely did disappoint a little.

If you’re into YA mysteries and looking a unique writing style you can go for this one.

This book definitely had a lot of potential, but it really just did not work for me. It felt very predictable, and yet the ending was somehow worse than the predictable ending I expected

This is a story about five teenagers who go on a camping trip and one of those teens disappears. The story is told through the narrative of the four remaining teenagers responses during police interviews.. It is a pretty original approach to telling the story. The reader learns the events leading up to the teen’s disappearance from the perspective of four very different teens in small increments. The author has a great sense of humor which comes across in her writing. I really couldn’t guess what really happened until the very end of the book. It is definitely worth a read. I am voluntarily submitting this review after reading an advanced complementary copy of this book.

eARC Review: Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for an early copy of this book to review!

My Rating: 4/5 stars

My Thoughts: I thought this book was good! I liked the writing and the way the story was told. It was told in a series of police interviews which was unique! I liked hearing each character’s perspectives of the events that occurred in this story. I also liked the sprinkling in of cryptid’s! It was unexpected and as a PNW girl myself, I loved to see it! I think fans of survival fiction/mysteries would love this book!

Get you a copy when it’s released tomorrow!

This thriller was a fun read. I loved the writing style. It's so different from what I'm used to, but I did love that! Written in an interrogation/interview style with each character and very little outside involvement. I enjoyed getting to know each character, and I liked how each one was different in so many ways yet came together for a traumatic camping trip at Salvation Creek. Each of the characters hold secrets that must be unraveled to find their missing friend. Parts of this book, I felt I needed more, but overall, I enjoyed reading this one. It was worth the read.

A fun night camping in the woods turned into the scariest adventures for them all. Salvation Creek, secluded and known for many disappearances. What possibly could this group of teenagers endure in one night?

5 teens go into the woods one night and only 4 come out alive... what happened out there?

The story is told from the point of view of the 4 teens while being questioned by the police about what happened leading up to that fateful night in the woods. It switches between characters quickly and keeps your heart racing as you try to figure out who is telling the truth, who is remembering what happened correctly, and what they are trying to cover up.

The characters are diverse... the want to be influencer, her boyfriend, her ex-girlfriend, her best friend and her best friend's step brother... it is a fun YA book that I can't wait to have my daughter read.

I loved the different points of view... it was a great way to hear all of the different sides of the same story quickly and in a unique way.

I love multiple POVs in mystery/thrillers.

Five friends go camping …four return home.

Everyone now is left questioning, doubting, learning things about their friends and selves. The past is brought into a new light.

I loved this quick thriller and couldn’t put it down. I was definitely kept guessing the entire book.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review.

I love YA thrillers, and this is one of the most unique storytelling plots I’ve read. It was fast-paced and gripping, a very quick and engaging read.

Five friends. One disappearance. Four different stories.

Petra, Maylee, Abigail, Nolan, and John are all teens who go one a camping trip into the woods, at a campsite in an infamous section of woods known as Salvation Creek. Over the years, many people have disappeared while in the woods under suspicious circumstances. There’s lots of tension between the friends, leading to lots of little squabbles amongst the group. When one of them disappears into the woods, it’s up to the remaining four to search for her the woods in the middle of the night. As tensions mount and each start to suspect one another, not to mention the paranoia that there’s something else out there, it becomes a race to find their friend before it’s too late. Told after the fact through alternating first-person recounting of events during police interviews, this is the epitome of unreliable narrators and shifting truths and half-truths, which makes for a pretty thrilling ride for the reader until the very end when the truth is finally revealed.

Tell Me What Really Happened is told entirely through police interviews and follows four main characters recounting what happened in the woods that caused their friend Maylee to go missing.

Telling a story entirely through police interviews is a risky strategy--the voice of each character has to really be strong, and all of their characterization is done through their dialogue and through the dialogue of their friends. But I think Sedoti nailed it.

Each character was so unique and really had their own individual voice, which gave a great sense of all of them. And I loved when we could see where each character's memory differed from the others. It's a great reminder of how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be, and it reinforced that these are four unreliable narrators, and any of them could have been responsible.

The tension between the characters throughout the story was well done too, both when they were with Maylee and in the aftermath.

It's difficult to pull off a solid YA thriller/mystery, and while I can't say I didn't see the ending coming, I did enjoy the ride there.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Tell Me What Really Happened
by Chelsea Sedoti
Pub Date: 04 Apr 2023

This book is dark, mysterious, and full of tension, very intense. I really enjoyed reading it. I loved the way it was told each chapter is a separate question, but with each students answer. Each short chapter added information that created a whole picture at the end.

Synopsis:

There are stories about the woods around Salvation Creek, about the people who have gone missing. Now their friend is one of them. A riveting, fast-paced YA mystery told entirely through first person police interviews of four teens over the course of a few hours.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for an E-ARC. All opinions are my own.

Maylee gets a group of friends together to go camping overnight. Not everything goes as planned and she ends up missing. When the rest need to call the police, they end up as suspects.
Opinion
The style this book is written is genius. Each chapter has an interview question from the police. There is a short section for each of the answers from the remaining friends.
This book, though over 400 pages, was a quick read. The short(ish) chapters made it fly by. I found myself consumed by what was happening.
This is a perfect book for young adult mystery/suspense lovers.
Many thanks to Net Galley and to Sourcebooks for providing me with an ARC of this book.

"Maylee once said, "What's the point of living if you don't live big?" And she did. Always. She was so alive that she made me more alive by being around her."

Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti is a unique young adult thriller told entirely through a police interrogation. Formatted to look like a transcription of a recording, each chapter title is a question, followed by first person answers from the four witnesses, including stage descriptions of sniffles, pauses, and whispers to a lawyer. As the hours tick by, each witness tells a slightly different version of the same story, leading the reader to wonder who is unreliable, and who is telling the truth.

Synopsis:
Salvation Creek is dangerous. There are decades-old stories of people going missing in the woods around Salvation Creek, not to mention the rough, remote terrain in a forrest filled with wild animals. Hell, not even a year ago a woman went missing, only to be found naked and dead a couple days later. So when Maylee Hayes proposes a camping trip to Salvation Creek, none of her four companions are thrilled about the idea. Then, when Maylee goes missing their first night, fears become reality as the four teens find themselves at the police station undergoing interrogations while search and rescue scour the forrest for Maylee—or her body.

Petra: Maylee’s best friend since Kindergarten. Petra’s dad is a detective, so she’s well aware of the time crunch S&R are on to find her friend. Rather than analyzing the nitty-gritty details of the night, Petra wants the cops to get out of the interrogation room and into the forest to look for Maylee. Instead, Petra is pushed further and further to the brink of a breakdown as she is asked to repeat her story, explain her theories, and do the police work for the idiots who won’t stop asking her stupid questions.

Nolan: Petra’s step-brother. Nolan never wanted to go in the first place, but his step-dad insisted he go to look after Petra, which is ridiculous, since Petra is the most anal, over-prepared person he knows. Besides, the cops are wasting their time asking questions about how the night went. Nolan knows what happened; it was Bigfoot who killed Maylee, and it was Bigfoot who killed all the other girls who went missing at Salvation Creek. Nolan only went along with Petra to gather proof of the creature, and Maylee’s “disappearance” is definite evidence.

John: Maylee’s boyfriend. Sure, he and Maylee argued all the time, but he would never hurt her. Just because he’s Black the cops in this town think John’s behind everything—first the car accident, now Maylee’s disappearance. John loved Maylee, despite what anyone else is saying. Now he’d please like to speak to his lawyer.

Abigail: Maylee’s friend. Abigail’s the outlier, just like she always has been. Her and Maylee were close for a couple months awhile back, but she’s not part of Maylee’s usual crowd. Everyone was surprised she was coming on the camping trip, and she was even more surprised that it wasn’t just her and Maylee. Abigail knows what everyone in this town thinks of her, the way they judge her based on where she lives and the truck her dad drives, but she knows those woods better than anyone, which is why Maylee invited her in the first place. Like her grandma always says….oh right, focus. No, Abigail wasn’t the one to bring the gun, and no, she has no idea where Maylee could have gone.

As crucial minutes pass by, each member of the camping trip tells a different story of what happened, pointing fingers and uncovering dark secrets about each other. But someone has to tell the truth; someone has to know what happened to Maylee…Right?

Thoughts:
Although I was initially thrown by the format, I loved this book. Having four different first-person accounts of the same night was riveting, and since it was entirely dialogue, the novel was a quick read. Every character was suspicious as some point, and each point of view was unreliable in the sense that memory itself is jaded as the brain protects itself from harm. Each reveal was gasp-worthy, and even without descriptions or scene-setting, the characters and plot were well-rounded and tangible. Even Maylee, without having any narration from her point of view, was three-dimensional, and I’m thoroughly impressed by Sedoti’s ability to flesh out a complete story using only an interview format.
The only thing that made this story four stars instead of five was the slight predictability. Because I read so many mystery/thrillers, I’ve become attuned to the cues authors give before big reveals, so while I may have seen this twist coming, the twist was so good that I think most readers will still be shocked. Finally, although I loved the last page, I found a lack of resolution at the end, which may have been Sedoti’s point, especially in a police interrogation. However, the final page makes up for that immediately, and I finished the book disquieted in the best way.

Overall:
Tell Me What Really Happened is the perfect young adult mystery for fans who enjoy an unreliable narrator. With this new thriller, Chelsea Sedoti joins the likes of Karen M. McManus, Courtney Summers, and Gillian Flynn. I can’t wait to read what Sedoti writes next, and I’m eager to see the reaction to her unique format and writing style.

I'll be honest this was tough to get through. The character development sucked. It was impossible to relate to any of them. They all seemed fake and two dimensional.

Tell Me What Really Happened is a surprising, challenging and interesting take on the YA mystery genre. Sedoti’s narrative stylings make for an intense read, as stories overlap and crumble against one another.

I really enjoyed the narrative style of this mystery, as it was all told through various police interview (or really interrogation?) transcripts. My thoughts were everywhere and my suspicions kept changing. Sedoti had me utterly hooked. The way you could spot little details not lining up or different characters trying to implicate one another was fascinating. It firmly places the reader in the role of the investigator, trying to sift through the lies to get to the truth that lies buried within. For me, this reminds me of a YA version of one of my all time favourite mystery authors: Janice Hallett. That epistolary style is one that will always intrigue me and Sedoti plays with it masterfully here. The pacing is also spot on, making pages fly by with ease.

I was pleasantly surprised with how much I connected with these characters. The narrative trappings of the interviews was one I thought would prevent this, but in fact I found the opposite. Their warmth, humanity and charisma came through, as well as their vulnerabilities and failings. When someone is placed under that kind of pressure, their true character comes to the surface and watching these characters slowly reveal themselves fully over the course of the book was amazing. Sedoti gives each of them so much depth and nuance in such a constricted form.

Tell Me What Really Happened gives a fresh spin on a classic format of YA mysteries, using a different narrative style to further pull you into the story and its compelling characters.

“She used to tell me, “Never apologize for taking up space in the world.”

Four interrogation rooms and four first person accounts of a camping trip gone incredibly wrong. Tell Me What Really Happened is a fast paced thriller, full of twists and a semblance of the supernatural.

The story picks up in a police station with a leading question and four teenagers attempting to recount how their night ended there and what happened to the fifth camper. Maylee, someone who wants to be remembered for any reason, girlfriend of John, and wannabe influencer, is missing and no one seems to know what happened.

So who are the other campers?
There’s Petra, a know-it-all, quick witted girl who is always prepared and always in control. Nolan, a believer of the supernatural, specifically Bigfoots (yes that’s plural). John, vice president of the Student Council and an all around popular guy (though he wouldn’t define himself that way). Abigail, a surprise addition to the trip, invited by Maylee, and someone who is quite familiar with the woods.

As each of the characters explain what happened, viewpoints conflict and the reader is left wondering who, if anyone, is reliable.

A little jarring at first, but easily read, the book is formatted like an audio transcript, just dialogue. There is no filler or description that is not directly spoken by one of the four witnesses as they lay out what happened. The teenagers do give details which build the world, and generally their language and manner of speaking is realistic. Most of the time it does feel as if someone is truly telling a story but there are bits and pieces that didn’t make sense in dialogue and as I read I kept thinking, no one really talks like this, or at least, teenagers don’t. Don’t get me wrong though, the fast pace of the book didn’t keep me too hung up on the language and the isolated setting had me genuinely feeling creeped out a few times.

Beyond language, the formatting didn’t leave a lot of room for connecting with the characters, and I never really cared about what would happen to them. (Except maybe John, who was falsely accused of a crime in the past and is being accused of something now. It’s a look at racism and how being black means there are often obstacles to jump over that others wouldn’t have.) All of the characters had their flaws and none of them were really likable.

The pace of the book kept me invested in the outcome and flipping pages as fast as I could. Sedoti’s style is great for those who may get easily distracted when reading or those who want something to speed through. It’s unique, thrilling, and mildly unpredictable. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a multiple perspective YA thriller.

• incredibly fast paced ya thriller

• interesting interview format that really brings the story to life

• you can’t trust anyones perspective, which makes it that much scarier

never have i flown through a thriller quite like this, i stayed up late trying to finish it which worked out because it made me too scared to sleep anyway. the author did such a fantastic job putting you into the heads of these characters fearing for their lives and how that would make them think and act.

reading from the perspective of each character really brought the story to life, i never knew who to believe. each chapter starts with the interviewer asking a question and then each character will give their responses, except they’re being interviewed alone and sometimes their answers are wildly different.

at no point did i truly know where the story was going, it wasn’t packed with a lot of wild twists and turns but it honestly didn’t need them because the story was crazy enough in its own

if you’re looking for a fast past thriller than look no further, i cant wait to read more from chelsea sedoti! thank you netgalley for this arc!