Thanks to NetGalley, Author Chelsea Sedoti, and Sourcebooks for advanced copy for honest review.

I really liked this way this book played out. Especially the way I felt with the detectives and trying to figure out whodunnit.

Five friends set off for a camping trip to Salvation Creek. Maylee- wannabe influencer. Petra- control freak. Nolan- step brother of Petra and believer of Big Foot. John- girlfriend of Maylee. And Abigail- invited to tag along. A lot has gone into getting the ball rolling for the camping trip and cracks are beginning to show, making things be just a little off. With no spoilers, only four of the five come back. They finally get to speak with the police and this is how the book goes. The four are separated into different interrogation rooms. We go through the investigation process with the detectives. We hear each of the stories in their own words and each being slightly different. Throughout you keep thinking, ‘well that doesn’t add up’ and ‘he or she did it’. Well I’m here to tell you, you’ll be wrong. Not until the end, with all the twists, will you be able to figure this out.

5 STARS, HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Sourcebooks Fire for the gifted e-book ❤️

Read this book if you like: Multiple POVs, police interview style, whodunit, secluded campground

I mostly enjoyed this book. It has quite a bit of cliches and predictable parts. A few of the characters, especially one, were very unlikable. That was clearly on purpose. I liked how incredibly different each character was, even though I wanted to strangle them all. They were very well written. I do feel like they resd as younger than they were supposed to be. I liked the concept of the entire book being the 4 teens talking to police. It's all interrogation. You don't read the questions, only the responses. That's very different and interesting. This reminds me of Holly Jackson's books. I wish that it had moved faster. A lot of people said they found it to be very fast-paced. I thought it was on the slower side and longer than it needed to be. The ending was not good. I do recommend it, but it just didn't live up to my expectations.

I really enjoyed this one. I was intrigued from the beginning from the way this sorry is told. A group of friends go on a camping trip and one of them goes missing. The entire story is told through the statements of the other 4 friends as they recount the events to the police. It was a very unique way of writing and one I really ended up enjoying. Even in this way of writing, we still were able to distinguish each personality of the characters speaking and made the story move quickly. My only gripe with this one is that the ending was a little underwhelming. Overall it was a very enjoyable read.

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

The cover alone made me want to read this one. This is an interesting and different premise. Four teens are in interrogation rooms due to a missing girl and a camping trip.

I loved all the different point of views. I also loved how every chapter was a different question. This is one that I will recommend.

The book was great. A lot of twists and turns from various points of view. I didn’t see that ending coming. Wow!

I really liked the format of this book. I thought it was very original. I wish that the language was not quite as colorful; I didn't see a need for most of it. I will read another book by this author.

This book was a unique take on a whodunnit. I loved the style and the way the characters conducted themselves in the police interviews. I definitely did not see that coming!

Thank you SOURCEBOOKS Fire and Chelsea Sedoti for giving me an ARC!

A disappearance. A murder case. 6 possible leads. No explanation; Netflix’s Elité meets the thriller and the outdoors. Told from the POVs of a police investigator talking to Maylee Hayes’ friends after the night she went missing after camping in the woods at Salvation Creek, we slowly discover the real and horrifying truth behind her disappearance as each of the witnesses unfold their version of the story.

This book started out strongly, but I didn’t understand much of what this book wanted to convey towards the end. The author did an amazing job in painting a thrilling atmosphere, and the characters but the ending just felt empty. This was a quick read, but wasn’t enjoyable for me. I thought it’d be more better, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations.

I found the way that this book was written was clever - it is told through interviews, and yet still manages to feel very clear and easy to visualize. It was predictable, but that didn't stop it from being an enjoyable read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the chance to read this book!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC - I am leaving this review voluntarily.
First of all, I did enjoy that this book was quite easy to read, personally i think an interview format makes that really easy to digest and wrap your head around.
The book had fairly ok descriptions, I could picture where the characters were.

Unfortunately, that’s all the positives that I can really say about this book. The characters were bland and uninteresting, and especially Nolan was an exceptional pain in the ass.

I just found the plot very boring and was expecting the last quarter of the book to answer questions and make you have a ‘woah wtf that actually happened?’ moment, but it never did happen. The ending was so disappointing and anti-climactic and I felt so annoyed that I had read almost 400 pages of this ‘mystery/thriller’ when it really didn’t meet either expectation.

Salvation Creek. It has been the source of stories and speculations about missing persons, specifically young women, for decades. It would not be my first choice of where to go camping, but for five friends it sounded like the perfect place to get away, make out, swap secrets, and escape their parents.

You know the drill...5 went into the woods.... only 4 made it out!


What is unique about this book is that it is told through interview/police interview format. Readers do not see the interviewers’ questions but the teens being interviewed give their responses. This worked very well. We get to know each teen through their interviews which show each's recollections of what happened, their thoughts about each other, even their suspicions.

Big kudos for such a unique way of telling the story. I found this to be very well done. This was a fun and entertaining YA mystery.

DNF at 73% I received this book as an eARC via NetGalley and want to thank Sourcebook Fire and Chelsea Sedoti for the opportunity to read and review this book. I unfortunately just didn’t feel any attachment to the characters or story by over 70% in. I liked the interesting style of having each of the characters tell the story via interrogation, bouncing back and forth between their answers. I also think that style makes the book fly by quickly. If you’re looking for a mystery book that is fast-paced, this may be up your alley. The premise is interesting and again I enjoyed the style. I just didn’t feel a connection to the characters or the plot that would make me want to continue on.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the advanced reader copy. TELL ME WHAT REALLY HAPPENED by Chelsea Sedoti tells the story of a group of teenage friends on a camping trip when one goes missing. Each chapter is told through police interviews as well as the four characters found alive at the scene. Chelsea Sedoti does a great job of creating distinct voices for each of the characters.

I would recommend this book to those who enjoy authors Holly Jackson or Karen McManus.

I enjoyed this book and the way that it was set up. The various points of view added some more mystery and suspense because you had the inside thoughts of each character, but had to determine who was telling the truth and who was twisting the story. I did not fully expect the ending, but I do like how it ended. All in all, I would recommend this book to my middle grade students who are interested in the true-crime genre even though this is a fictional story.

Told entirely through police interviews, four teens tell conflicting accounts of the night their friend went missing in the woods. This book includes many of my favorite YA mystery/thriller cliches: a secluded campground, mean teenage girls, and a suspicious boyfriend.
My favorite part about this book was the interview format. The short, faced-past chapters, each with a police officer's question to focus it, end in cliffhangers that keep you turning the pages. Despite the unconventional format, I could still get a vivid image of the characters and the setting.
I also enjoyed the slight inconsistencies in each character's recollection of the same events. This was a really smart way to characterize everyone!
The plot is a bit predictable, especially if you're an avid mystery/thriller reader. However, I don't need to be shocked by plot twists in order to enjoy a story. So while this isn't the most memorable or unique book, it's a very enjoyable and well-crafted one. I'd definitely recommend this book for fans of Holly Jackson and Jessica Goodman!

The format of this book took some getting used to, but once you do it's a fun read. You have to keep reading because you have to know what happened on that camping trip

Tell Me What Really Happened is a fast-paced, YA thriller/mystery. Because it’s all told in the first person, I’m sure some people didn’t like it. But I found the way the information was handed out to be more that compelling enough to keep reading. In fact, I read this book in one sitting.

Did the teens in this story make a bunch of mistakes? Hell yes. But did they do anything that a teenager wouldn’t truly do? Aside from one particular plot line, no, their reactions seemed pretty spot on. It also added a nice extra touch (and built in a bit of comedic humor) that one of the characters was so into Bigfoot.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti, 416 pages. Sourcebooks Fire, 2023. $20. lgbtqia
Language: R (74 swears, 21 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG13
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: HIGH
Five high schoolers go on a camping trip, each with their own agenda. But something goes terribly wrong. Only four get to the police department to report what happened, and none of them want to admit the whole truth.
Sedoti tells the story after the fact as each of the characters are being questioned by the police. Readers, in the position of the police, get the story piece by piece from four different perspectives. The story is suspenseful and engaging, and I was surprised that the piecemeal development of the story didn’t feel choppy—it felt right. This is one of those books that you finish and wish you could read again for the first time.
John is Black, and it is implied that Maylee, Petra, Nolan, and Abigail are White because of how John is treated. The mature content rating is for underage drinking, innuendo, and mentions of drugs, rape, sex, and partial nudity. The violence rating is for blood, gun use, and mentions of murder.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and Netgalley for this ARC!

I'm a big fan for unusual story telling choices, so a book written trough a police interviews hooked me right in. We have 4 characters that are all telling their story what happened on a camping trip and to their fifth friend. One of the most interesting things for me was to see how the people saw the same events from different perspectives. This gave an additional edge to discover who was lying and who was just misremembering details. The plot was really fast paced and most of the chapters were quite short, which kept me reading for hours and I actually finished the book in one sitting. I also enjoyed the characters that were flawed, but also sympathetic. The only down side was that guessed the plot twists quite fast. Still I kept reading, just to see if I was right.

This is a great book for mistery lovers that like interesting story telling mediums with developed characters! 4.5/5

This was a really fun YA Mystery that I read in a day! Maylee has gone missing while on a camping trip with 4 friends. The book is told via the friends’ responses to police interviews. I thought that was going to be confusing at first, but as the book went along it wasn’t hard to follow and I really got the sense of what each characters’ personality was. No two teens have the same story of what happened, and the story unfolds in a really interesting way!