Well, one interrogation room: four teenage witnesses from a camp trip that goes wrong in Salvation Creek where a brutal crime occurs. This is absolutely exciting, riveting thriller keeping you in your toes!

Over achier- control freak Petra, her nerdy- Big Foot obsessed step brother Nolan, an outcast of school who lives in trailer park Abigail and person of interest- victim's boyfriend John! The events are told from their POVs. Their friend Maylee who is forced them to have a camping trip on weekend in Salvation Creek is MISSING and probably dead!

The other participants of the trip are these four unreliable witnesses who tell their subiective comments about the entire incident.

Petra gives snarky answers, trying to teach the officers to do their job because she knows a lot about criminal and investigation procedures about missing people thanks to her police officer daddy). Nolan keeps giving enough statistical information about natural habitats and special attributes of Big Foot and he also gives extra information about missing people in Salvation Creek since 1900s. Abigail gives long speeches and in the middle of them she forgets what was the entire question, constantly babbling, giving anecdotes from her dear Nana Abbie and poor John attends to the interrogation with his lawyer because this is his second round to get questioned for a crime. The first time he's blamed to drive under the influence and inure his friend ( thankfully he was acquitted. He wasn't even sitting in the driver seat. ) But two of his friends point their fingers at him (especially Abigail insists he's the murderer even though they are not sure vet that their friend Mavlee is dead)

So what happened that night?
Five teenagers: Maylee: influencer, magnet of the group who convinces her best friend/ super organizer Petra and Abigail; (Maylee and she have a complicated relationship) who knows a lot about the wilderness and her boy friend John to attend to the last minute camping! Petra's conspiracy theorist/ ultra weird step brother Nolan joins to the group because Petra's parents force him to keep an eye on his stepsister.

Instead of Maylee, none of them are volunteered to participate to this trip but Maylee is great manipulator. During their camping, Nolan brings his special gadget to search for the creatures lurking around. ( at least he insists some dangerous creatures took many lives of innocent campers in the past! ) He finds a cabin in the woods filled with hunting equipment ( lots of sharp knives!) throughout his search. The other members of the group get creeped out and they return back to their camping site without looking back!

But at the night time things get a little heated between them. The more alcohol, more slurry confessions later, they find out one of them brought a gun to their trip! At the end of the night, a gun shot bursts out and cuts the silence of the woods!

What happened to Maylee! Did one of them kill her? Did Bigfoot tear apart her body?

Four unreliable voices, one murder case, long interrogation process! Just continue to read and enjoy the gripping mystery!

It was easy to read and smart whodunnit thriller to read in one sitting! Highly recommend to YA thriller fans!

Many thanks to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for sharing this amazing digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I really enjoyed this book! It was not your typical YA who done it. It was about a couple and their group of friends decide to spend the night in the woods. I mean what could go wrong am I right! I thought it was really different that it was told after the fact at the police station while they were being questioned.

Thank you NetGalley, Chelsea Sedoti and SourcebooksFire for allowing me to read the advanced Ya thriller “Tell me what really happened.” This book is due to be published April 4th 2023.

Five friends decide to go on a camping trip to Salvation Creek. There’s super obsessed and controlling Petra , her nerdy Bigfoot believing stepbrother Nolan, trailer park/ ex Abigail , Maylee and her boyfriend John. Maylee ends up going missing during the night.
This story is told through police interviews told by each person. They can’t seem to get their stories straight at all.

This was definitely a hooking fast paced YA thriller and I couldn’t put it down till I finished.

Five teens go camping in the woods, and only four come out. This book is in the form of interviews the remaining four teens, recounting what happened.

I loved the structure of this book! I’m a big fan of different writing styles, and I think it was successful here. However, I feel like the resolution/ending did not live up to the suspense of the rest of the book. I think making it not a murder really in the end was disappointing because it could’ve been much creepier/suspenseful like the rest of the book.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Tell Me What Really Happened, by Chelsea Sedoti, is a fast-paced young adult mystery told in an innovative format. When teenager Maylee Hayes gets lost in the woods on a camping trip, her four friends come under immediate suspicion of foul play. The novel follows the police interrogation of Petra, Maylee's best friend, Nolan, Petra's step-brother, John, Maylee's boyfriend, and Abigail, their acquaintance. Each chapter begins with a question from the police followed by the answers of the teenagers, and readers are left to piece together what happened on the fateful night when Maylee disappeared.

The setting of the story is a campsite near Salvation Creek, an area of haunted woods in Bigfoot country. The land is ripe with stories of death and abduction, and the four teens all recount the folklore of the area, noting the poisoned waters and the long string of missing women who have disappeared from the area over the last one hundred years. These stories add tension and color to the novel, echoing the cries of the teens who want the police to stop questioning them and find their friend.

The voices of each character are distinct and reflect young adult language and impulses. This novel will appeal to reluctant readers who enjoy the pace of mystery and police shows, and the short bursts of answers clustered around each question will keep young adults reading.

The book lacks the nuance and emotion of adult mysteries but I would recommend it as an interesting read for a teen. Beyond the problem of finding Maylee, the characters recount campfires, roasting marshmallows, drinking alcohol, and playing spin-the-bottle, and all of this makes the book feel like a typical coming-of-age story drenched in tragedy. The format of the book was the most interesting part and it held my interest as I tried to deduce the events of the fateful night. A fun read for young adults who enjoy mystery.

This was so much FUN! I flew through this book--it was spooky and kept me turning pages late into the night. I think YA lovers will devour this! We follow a group of teens who are giving their oral history to the police of what happened the night before on a doomed camping trip. Five of them went to Salvation Creek, a remote area in a forest known for mysterious disappearances. Only four of them came home...what happened and where is Maylee? The teens all have a story to tell, and their stories aren't always quite matching up...

Seppy's 4-Star Review: 
 I choose this one because I love mysteries.  The plot was interesting and throughout the book, I was trying to figure out what really happened. But it is impossible until all characters were questioned. 
I felt that it did drag some because each of the characters gives their own view of every single detail which can be a little repetitive. It was a good book, I was surprised by the ending.
Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti in exchange for an honest review.

This book could be an amazing audiobook! With all the characters, it would be fun hearing different voices.
First reading it, you feel like you’re thrown into the chaos of events (good thing) you’re hooked from the get go.
Who done it thing going on. I liked it, a lot happens, and makes you think! Great book!

Five teens go into the woods for an overnight camping trip, but only four come out. Aspiring influencer Maylee Hayes is missing, and only the friends who were with her during the drama filled evening leading up to her disappearance can reveal what happened to her. I finished this incredibly quick read in just one day. I loved the idea behind the structure of the narration. The format of telling the story through snippets of police interviews/interrogation is a fresh take on the frequently used dual narration POV.

As much as I appreciate the structure of the narrative, however, it did leave me feeling slightly disconnected from the characters. There were times that I felt I was getting a better description of Big Foot (which plays a major role in the story) than I got of Maylee and her diverse group of friends. Though the ending requires some suspension of disbelief, the story ties together nicely and was well worth the couple of hours it took me to read.

*A special thanks to SOURCEBOOKS Fire and NetGalley for an eArc of this novel in exchange for an honest review*

Chelsea Sedoti’s “Tell Me What Really Happened” is a gripping YA mystery about a five teens who go on a last-minute camping trip. But only four leave the woods because just after midnight, one of them disappeared.

The remaining four are taken into police custody and are interrogated separately to find out exactly what happened the night before. As the hours tick by, the teens’ lies and truths are slowly revealed. But is it too late?

“Tell Me What Really Happened” is told entirely through the first-person police interviews of the four high schoolers that made it out of the woods. The characters are separated and are sharing their side of the incident during their interrogation. We don’t see the detectives that interview the characters and the only dialogue we hear from them are at the very beginning of each chapter. Other than that, it’s only what the teenagers reference in their interviews.

The first-person interview format gives the book an interesting hook. It also increases the stakes by allowing the reader to intimately see what the other characters are feeling about their missing friend. As the story progresses, the reader has a chance to solve the mystery as the characters share their memories of the night before.

Each of the five characters represents a specific high school stereotype—an academic overachiever, a conspiracy theorist, a social outcast, a control freak, and a wannabe social media influencer—and those stereotypes really drive the plot. The characters were fairly diverse, which is so important in YA books.

“Tell Me What Really Happened” is a solid YA mystery that relies on tried-and-true tropes presented in a very unique way. The first-person police interviews heighten the tension of the story. It won’t be long before the reader is biting their nails to figure out what really happened in Salvation Creek that fateful camping trip.

I really liked how this book was written. The format was very unique. I think it’s one you either like or hate.

This was a good campy thriller. The plot was decently paced. The characters were very distinct. I didn’t love the ending but really enjoyed the buildup. Overall I did enjoy this book, and it was a quick read.

Thank you to Chelsea Sedoti, NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for an advanced eBook in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. I was hooked right away. I love the format of a story told through police interviews with four different characters. Sedoti does an excellent job of characterizing these teens through dialogue only. I feel like I know each one of them and could distinguish their voices even if they weren't labeled in the book anymore after the halfway point.
The plot is straightforward: five teens go on a weekend camping trip, and one of them goes missing, so the police are questioning the other four to find out what really happened. However, despite the straightforward storyline, the technique of telling the story solely through police interviews makes the book feel more complex with flashbacks and present moments and interesting twists and turns. The characters also make the story feel fresh. There are cliches, like the pretty blonde one having a "sparkle" that makes her stand out and her wanting to be an influencer just because she's pretty and the black kid having been accused of a crime before and now being wary of the cops, but there are also fresh takes on characters, like Abigail and her dad's relationship and Nolan's hobbies and interests, along with the dynamics between Petra and Nolan.
What kept me reading is the suspense. I wanted to know what happened, how, and why. I also wanted to know more about these characters and their lives. I loved the dynamics of all the relationships and that each of them had backstories that made them more sympathetic but also more layered and complex as characters. I love Sedoti's writing, how descriptive she is, and the characters are funny and also interesting.
For me, the ending was a bit disappointing. I was expecting something more dramatic and felt it was anticlimactic after everything. There are big reveals, but they come before the novel's ending, so they weren't as shocking as they could've been, and the ending itself was then rendered a bit flat in my opinion.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book! I couldn't stop reading because I loved the voices, the plot line, and the suspense. I strongly recommend this book to YA lovers, people who enjoy suspense, and people who like a good in-the-woods thriller.
Thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for providing a free digital copy of the book for review.

Five teenagers go into the woods camping. Only four come out. What happened on that trip? Was it Bigfoot? Who brought a gun? The story unfolds as you read what happened through individual interviews with the police. I like point of view stories by various characters. It was interesting to get to know them that way.
Thanks to net galley for the opportunity to review this ARC.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ebook. Absolutely excellent … grabbed me from the first page and could NOT put it down! I read lots of thrillers & horror which often have a similar plot. This book throws a twist to the “normal” thriller and I really liked the constant stories from each person while being interrogated without ever having the detectives actually “speak” in the book. Just a great, different thriller!!

First off, thank you NetGalley for this arc. This is a YA thriller that I could not put down.

A group of five high schoolers go camping down at Salvation Creek for a weekend, they thought they’d go make memories, but what they got was so much more. Sometime during the night Maylee disappears.

This story is written in a series of interviews. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy this format, but I actually really enjoyed it! This story is fast paced, twisting and turning, and addictive! I definitely did not see the end coming! Highly recommend

❤️friendships
❤️love & lose
❤️camping
❤️who done it
❤️multiple povs
❤️fast paced

I am a big fan of YA mysteries, camp settings, and a fun cast. This book had all of those things and presented them in an interesting format (as a police interview). It was a fun, popcorn read that didn't break any new ground or change the genre. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something to entertain them without straining their brains.

Maylee really wants to go on a camping trip this weekend. She invites her boyfriend, John, her best friend, Petra, and another friend named Abigail. Nolan, Petra's brother also tags along. Their location is a place called Salvation Creek, a camping location where historically, girls have gone missing. The next day, everyone minus Maylee arrives at the police station. Was one of them involved in her disappearance?

This story is told through a set of police interviews that the four remaining teens go through. The format was super interesting, and the four teens had very distinct voices. The mystery itself was just okay, and the ending didn't shock me like I was hoping it would. It you like YA thrillers, you'd probably like this!

I enjoyed reading the book in an interview format. It was nice getting each character’s side of the story. It was interesting reading it too where some characters were hard to like, and other aspects made you question each person throughout the entire story. Kept me hooked from the start.

I thought I would love the format of this book but I didn’t, it was too choppy for my liking but I can see the appeal of it to others. This was a DNF for me.

I liked the ideas the book had to offer and I definitely liked the structure. It was set up as a police interview. Each chapter started with a question and it went through each character's response to that question. This gave insight into them. But the storyline itself was kind of odd and shaky. The ending didn't have any finality to it. One doesn't really know how it truly ends. I finished the book feeling like I hadn't reached any kind of resolution.