I absolutely love Holly Jackson. She is a brilliant thriller writer and I'm so mad at myself for not reading this sooner. We have been handselling this in my store for a few weeks now, and the biggest sell is that the book takes place over the span of 8 hours. The level of tension and anxiety that can be built in such a short amount of time is insane. I felt like this book would be a great movie. There were many freaky parts where I thought to myself wow! The suspense was just brilliant and the characters were so well done. I'm thrilled that there is more Holly Jackson in the world.

I adored the A Good Girl’s Guide for Murder series, so when I saw that Holly Jackson had a new book coming out I was really excited. So when I got my copy via Netgalley, imagine my surprise and disappointment that his novel just didn’t hit the way AGGGTM did. The writing style is still great, but due to the short time frame of the novel, you don’t really get attached to characters the way you did in AGGGTM so I found it hard to care about the story and the ending felt pretty rushed without enough build up or sense made of all of the plot points.

This book had me S C R E A M I N G.

Holly Jackson always distills seemingly random elements throughout her story but once everything is revealed, everything comes together perfectly. She is truly a master of her craft!
The story sucks you in from the very beginning, so much so, that I read this in one sitting under six hours. It was quite literally unputdownable.

All the characters were so intriguing and deliciously suspicious but I truly LOVED Red, the main character. We are lucky enough to be inside her head as she slowly puts the pieces of the puzzle together. She is a very chaotic but brave and endearing character and I almost wish this were a book series because I would love to read more of her adventures.
It was also fun to see the other five characters shedding their false layers and pretenses, stepping out from their "roles" (the best friend, the leader, the crush, the jokester, the girlfriend) and revealing their true selves or secrets.

The story takes place inside of an RV which acts as the only safe place for the characters. It also traps them from the outside world and help. The RV provided a great terror-inducing, claustrophobic setting that only added to the overall stressful atmosphere of the book.

I don't really read mystery thrillers but Holly Jackson reminds me that maybe I should start because I love every single thing she comes up with and how incredible her reveals are.

To conclude, Five Survive is fast-paced, fascinating, has a lot of reveals and has a very satisfying ending!

Read this for:
🔪 Claustrophobic atmosphere
🔪 Deadly road-trip
🔪Twists you won't see coming
🔪 Secrets and betrayal
🔪Romance crumbs

Red and her friends think that they're on their way to the perfect spring break trip. Sure, Red has been distracted (to say the least) since her mom died in the line of duty a few years ago and couldn't afford to fly, which is why her best friend Maddie arranges for them to drive an RV to Gulf Shores instead. But when the RV gets a flat...and then four more flats and the gas tank blown out, their road trip seems less fun and like a hostage situation. Because it is. Being held at gun point by a sniper in the woods, the friends can only get out by revealing the secret the sniper wants to know. Throughout the course of the night, more secrets come out causing ripples through the group. Will they make it out alive? And as friends?

Holly Jackson does it again by weaving together a cast of characters you want to know more about and keeping readers on the edge of their seats.

This book really delivered on the promise of the premise. I loved the isolation and Rich jerk tropes. I was able to get the twist pretty early on, though… I can’t wait to read another book by this author.

Love love and loved this book! Can't wait to read more from this author!
Thanks Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Holly Jackson knows how to write a YA thriller!!! After reading the entire "Good Girls Guide To Murder" series, I was looking forward to her next book! And this one hit all the marks that you want from a thriller! The characters were likable and believable. The plot was fast-paced and driven! Highly recommend!!

The queen of YA thrillers has done it again! Five survive had me at the EDGE of my seat! I love a good whodunit and I was left guessing until the very end!
This book is extremely fast paced and will leave you hooked from the very beginning

There are 6 friends in an RV on their way for spring break.
That is, until their GPS goes haywire and they get stuck in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire
After stopping to change the tire, they notice that all 4 of the tires have been shot at & there is a sniper hidden somewhere in the forest lurking and waiting 😨
Soon the friends discover that the sniper is looking for a secret one of them has
Desperate to escape and frightened for their lives, the group start turning on one another as they try to figure out exactly what the sniper wants
Will they cling to their dangerous secrets or will the truth set them free? *cue dramatic music*

Wow just wow!!! I really enjoyed this!! Being stuck in an RV while there’s a sniper shooting at them is such a brilliant setting
The stakes were SO high! This would make such a fantastic movie
I highly recommend this for thriller fans!

This was quick and intense. Oliver is a piece of shit l. Most of the characters were deep and it being told most through dialogue really kept the pace up.

4.5 stars!!!!! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!

Since this is Holly Jackson and I LOVED her series I never read the synopsis and let me tell you what.. I was taken aback and surprised in the best way.

After 20% I found myself completely ENTHRALLED! There is nothing to compare this to that I can think of. Just the thought of how fucking creepy the whole scenario is. The fear, paranoia, mental exhaustion - I can’t even imagine and Holly wrote it perfectly.

I never thought I would root for a very young man to be murdered…. buuuut… you’ll know when you know.


It’s brilliant, fast paced, insane. You need to read this book.


Now, you may be thinking, why not 5 star? I didn’t like the very very very end and it didn’t have that feeling (this may change). I can’t say why but the very end isn’t my cup of tea.

Thank you to #netgalley for the ARC. This is a young adult thriller. I did not care for this book. It was pretty slow. I was half way into and still nothing really had happened. Nobody had died or was gravely injured nothing. I quit at the middle.

Five Survive creeped me out in the best way. I got flashbacks from the slasher type movies I was into in high school thanks to the chilling vibe this book puts off.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children's, Delacorte Press for allowing me to read this book. This was scary good and also just scary! I usually read before bed but could not do that with this book because it was so immersive it terrified me to even read it. It keep me guessing, I liked some characters, hated others, and connected well with the plot. Holly Jackson is an amazing writer! 4.5 ⭐️.

I am a HUGE fan of a good girls guide to murder so I was thrilled to read this one! Holly Jackson can do YA so well and I had very high expectations going into this one! While Holly Jackson is an auto buy another for me I am sad to report the this one fell a little short for me.

I was hooked from the beginning but I quickly got lost while trying to keep the characters straight (6 was just a lot for me) and having it in 3rd POV isn't my favorite as I don't usually connect with the characters. I am glad I stuck through because the ending was good and the twists were fun while I was able to guess them. I also thought this was a really long book and could have used less in places where I felt were drawn out.

All things considered following up the huge hit of AGGGTM, this one was done tastefully and is still a look i liked! Thanks again for allowing me to read this book!

Such a great one from Holly Jackson! This book will be amazing for my thriller readers in the high school library. Need to buy multiple copies of this one!

Thank you to Netgalley and Delacorte Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book!

Once the action finally kicks in after a lengthy stint of character expositions and building the backdrop to this young adult thriller, Five Survive manages to create a compellingly tense story rife with mystery, murder, and aching wound of grief.

I think thrillers live or die by two things: character and setting. Five Survive generally succeeds on both fronts.

The first comes down to how Red Kenny grew on me over the course of the book. She’s a character whose internal monologue was, at times, mildly annoying. (Take a shot every time she says something along the lines, “It can’t be my secret. No one knows about the plan. That’s the whole point.” You’ll be drunker than Simon by the halfway point.) However, there’s something genuine about her…. not in terms of candor, but rather Red’s heart. There's the searing guilt at her core from years of her blaming herself for her mother's death, but the walls she tries and fails to put up to block those thoughts and emotions don't stop her from caring and loving in a deep way. Also, the more she started to buck up against Oliver’s domineering plans for the group, the more I liked her.

The second is how the setting of the RV elevates the thriller from an otherwise 'we're trapped in the middle of nowhere with a killer' story to one where the setting is almost a character in itself. The way they have to utilize items in the RV to protect themselves and attempt to escape--the flimsy mattress and ripped up suitcase for covering the windows--to the way it slowly builds a sense of claustrophobia in the narrative, the characters becoming more and more on top of each other as the night goes on. It forces the author and the characters to be smarter with their limited choices.

Final mildly-spoiler notes: I felt like there where a number of plot twists that were relatively easy to predict, I will give Miss Holly Jackson credit where it's due... THE DOORBELL REVEAL???!?? Even though I already had the inkling about who killed Red’s mother, I literally pushed back my chair and stood up to shout.

As someone who doesn’t typically reach for thrillers when choosing their next read, I definitely enjoyed this book!

3.5 stars; that last half had me so gripped wow i was zooming. the plot twist is definitely a bit predictable but i never really care about that to be honest. overall really liked this, i don't think it particularly stands out as a ya mystery so if you want something that's super different and unique maybe this won't be for you, but it was quick & fun & had me !!!ing so it did what it needed to do (for me)

This is the last book that I read last year and I’m so disappointed to say that it didn’t work for me. The premise sounds so intriguing. A group of six friends (a mixture of high school and college aged) are taking an RV to get to their Spring Break destination. Along the way they get lost in a remote area where they are then forced into a situation with a sniper. This entire book takes place in eight hours as the group of friends need to figure out who has the secret that the sniper wants.

This book dragged on so long that the less than four hundred page book felt like it was never-ending. In 2022 I feel like I perfected the art of putting down books pretty early on that I knew I wasn’t going to like. However, I decided to keep forcing myself through this one because it’s Holly Jackson and I enjoyed the first two books in the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy (I haven’t read the third yet). But that was a mistake and I should have trusted my instincts.

One of my biggest issues with the story is that so much of it just doesn’t make sense. There is a character in this friend group who is so over the top angry and volatile but because he’s the oldest everyone just does what he says for absolutely no reason. Jackson tried to make the main character, Red, unreliable but she really isn’t and it was bizarre how much time was spent trying to make us question her memory because she didn’t know the pattern of the curtains. Also, it was fairly obvious the entire time who was behind everything and what the secrets were.

This book does have over a four star rating on Goodreads though so I’m definitely in the minority of this one. I could rant further about more issues I had but I do still have a lot of respect for Jackson as an author and I hope that I fall in love with her next story.

I adored Holly Jackson's Good Girls Guide to Murder series so I was thrilled to receive a copy of Five Survive. Holly is so good at keeping her readers engaged through fast-paced dialogue. This was a page turner and the end--holy cow the tears. How the heck does she know it? I don't know. RECOMMEND THIS ONE.

This was a solid 3.5 (ALMOST a 4 but I rounded down just because reflecting, I did find myself annoyed for 90% of the book due to one specific character). However, if you're looking for a good thriller that isn't TOO scary or gory, then this may be the book for you!

Red, dealing with the traumatic death of her mom from 5 years ago, has to live through another night of horror when she and 5 others are trapped in an RV by a rogue sniper. The premise alone had me jumping at the chance to read this, and I really enjoyed Holly Jackson's AGGGTM series, so I was super pumped for this one. And this didn't really disappoint, though there were a few instances that fell flat for me (won't go into detail on most of them because they would be very spoilery). The one thing I will say is that had I been in that RV, Oliver would have been thrown out immediately due to his attitude NO SIR.

I probably won't grab for this one again, but I do recommend it for others!