This book really just took me for a ride. I loved the build up, the character development, and the writing. I would definitely read more from this author!

This was one of my anticipated reads for 2022, especially after reading A Good Girls Guide to Murder at the beginning of the year. Then I was so excited to have recieved an Arc from Netgalley. I however was very disappointed in Five Survive. The characters were not relatable at all, the plot was just so out there that I couldn't even get into this book. The "twists " were so predictable that it took all I had to not DFN the book after a couple of chapters. I pushed through though, just hoping it would pick up. Sadly it did not, at least for me. I really did want to enjoy this one more but I just didn't. I'm giving it 3 stars for two reasons, the writing was done well and you may enjoy this one more. I leave that up to you.

“And it felt stupid to admit it to herself, but the sight of that little check mark did change something in her. Small, minuscule, a tiny firework bursting in her head, but it felt good. It always felt good, checking off those boxes.”

⭐ 💫

Thank you to Delacorte Press and Netgalley for a copy of this book for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

content warnings: grief, death (multiple family members), blood/violence, murder, kidnapping/hostage situation, gun violence/shooting, alcoholism, gaslighting/emotional manipulation, one brief mention of terminal illness

Holly Jackson has been one of my favorite authors since I first listened to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder a few years ago, and an auto-buy author since I read the sequel, Good Girl Bad Blood. Still having As Good As Dead left, I paused that amazing series when I noticed she had a standalone coming out on NetGalley! The synopsis was a little dark for me, but I made it through AGGGTM alright, so I powered on, sure I would adore it anyway. Unfortunately, I was very wrong.

In Five Survive, we follow Red, on her way to spring break with her friends in an RV. After losing cell service and getting lost in the middle of nowhere after dark, their tires and shot out by a sniper. Will they be able to figure out what the shooter wants or to escape before time runs out?

I loved Pippa from AGGGTM because she felt relatable in her unwavering missions for truth and justice, but I also loved the whole cast, including the love interest and side/minor characters. In Five Survive, I found the main character Red to be jarring and difficult to follow. There are many high stakes conversations happening around her, and this plot had the potential to be really interesting. Instead, Red’s narration mostly provides us with inner monologue with how she is poor and useless compared to everyone else, how her parents don’t love her, how she’s the odd one out on the trip, etc. After each monologue, she has a repetitive flashback and then is distracted by the pattern of curtains, and never seems involved in anything happening. I think we are supposed to sympathize with her sad past, but it felt very “woe is me”, and for 80-85% of the book, Red does absolutely nothing except listen to conversations she doesn’t participate in and have things happen *to* her. At multiple points, we are even told that Red doesn’t understand someone’s facial expression, but makes the same face back, and yet we have no idea *what* said facial expression is. This was one of the worst cases of show vs. tell I’ve seen this year.

Some of the plot twists at the end were actually interesting and a little unexpected, but my intrigue and enjoyment were so low by the end that all I could manage was a shrug. I had mild interest at best in three of the characters, but by the end, really only was interested in Arthur.

I will still finish Jackson’s first trilogy, and am willing to try something else of hers, but I don’t think I would recommend this book to anyone unless you have a specific craving for a gory, slow-paced YA thriller in a confined setting with an unreliable narrator.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Let me preface this by the fact that I do not usually read a lot of thriller/suspense, but I have read all of Holly Jackson's Good Girl's Guide to Murder trilogy and enjoyed those. I also enjoyed this quite a bit. Holly Jackson does a really good job of making you think you figure out the twist at about 30% into her books, and then the last 20% of the book hits you with an additional 5 other twists that take you for a fun ride.

The premise of this book is that 6 young adults are going on a road trip from PA to Gulf Shores for Spring Break. They borrow an RV to get there, and then they have a harrowing night when somehow they become the target of an active shooter in the deep woods of SC. This is a story of survival and wits, as well as trying to figure out why the heck this is happening to them.

We hear the whole story through our somewhat unreliable narrator Red (short for Redford). Red is joined by her best friend, Maddy, Maddy's older brother Oliver and his girlfriend Reyna, Simon, the aspiring thespian and friend to Maddy and Red, and Arthur, a boy on Simon's basketball team and sort of crush of Red. Red is unreliable because it seems like she has memory problems maybe some ADHD or autistic tendencies, and she keeps telling us she is lying. But she is observant and smart, or as she keeps reminding us "has potential". Red also has a traumatic past, and the word "mom" is taboo around her.

I did see one of the "twists" at 25% through, but the rest of them...whoa. Jackson's writing style should be effortless and straightforward, but for some reason I end up reading her books at a slower than average pace for me. But I think this is her best executed novel yet. Good Girls Guide was fun and quirky and by the end of it, I was ready to be done with those characters. But Five Survive has a fresh cast, a story contained mostly to one night's events (besides flashbacks in Red's mind), and I like how she closes the novel with a bit of her "mixed media" that only appears at the end.

This is somewhere between a 3.5 and 4 star for me, and I think if you like thrillers/survival stories, this is one to check out!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 4 stars
Five Survive is a brand-new mystery book by Holly Jackson, where six friends are stranded in the middle of nowhere in a RV with a killer out there.

“Everybody had secrets, though, didn’t they?”

I immensely enjoyed reading the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series and had thought this book would have the same feeling as those books, especially the first two, had. I have to say that this book has a very different feel.

The writing is very fast paced, seeing as the whole story essentially takes place in about 8 hours total. A lot keeps happening and because it is fast-paced, it sometimes seems a bit rushed. I had also expected there to be more humor or sarcasm present, as that was one of the parts I loved so much about AGGGTM, aside from the writing format. I have to be honest, there was little humor to the whole story, which made it feel a little static due to that. It was high intensity, fast-paced, constant high tension, fear, etc. It felt a little too much of everything sometimes.

The characters were a bit difficult to like for me. Red seemed very detached to me and a bit two-dimensional. I had a hard time connecting to her and I didn’t really feel much for her. Olivier was just very annoying overall and I didn’t like his personality, but it fitted the story perfectly. Maddy was kind off not present most of the time. I often kept forgetting she was there if Red hadn’t mentioned her for a while. I only like Arthur to be honest, as he came across as a very sweet boy.

The whole feel of the book seemed to lean more towards horror that mystery thriller for me, maybe due to a bit of humor missing and the overall feeling the book gave. It is a young adult book, but I feel like a bit more balance in the high intensity would’ve fitted the story better.

Despite all this, it is a very easy and enjoyable read. While a bit predictable and not as mind blowing as AGGGTM, I still enjoyed seeing all play out during the time it takes place. The ending, while not entirely satisfying in my opinion, was a fitting one for the story.

Overall, it is a good mystery book with an enjoyable plot. While I don’t believe it is as good as AGGGTM, it is a good book.

A fast-paced mystery thriller where six teenagers trapped inside a RV in the middle of nowhere with secrets that's worth killing for…

⚠️ 𝐓𝐖: guns, death threats, mob violence, death, injury

The plot is interesting, it keeps me interested to see how they try survive and as they grew desperate to escape as secrets starts being revealed..

I found the characters are somewhat relatable when a person is in this kind of circumstances, the ugly parts of a person started to show. To be honest, it took me a while to connect with the character and being inside Red’s mind - reading about what she thinks can be confusing sometimes.

I have to admit the twist and turns in the last few chapters are unexpected, some might felt a bit far-fetched but still manage to surprise me.
The epilogue makes the story has an open-ending type which always drives me crazy not knowing the real end!

Overall, this is a pretty good mystery thriller – It’s enjoyable and able to give the “keep you on the edge of your seat” feeling throughout the story.
I’m looking forward to read future books from this author!

<b>Actual rating: 3.5⭐</b>

<i> I received this review copy through Netgalley and I’m leaving this review voluntarily. Huge thank you to TBR and Beyond Tours for having me on this book tour!</i>

Five Survive is an adrenaline filled, claustrophobic literary ride in an ironically stranded RV. First off, there are six people in this story and the title clearly states that Five Survive. If that’s not enough to make you constantly question what happens next then I don’t know what is.

Six friends are on the road to Spring Break when they become stranded in the middle of nowhere with no phone service. That’s bad enough until the situation becomes a nightmare. It’s no accident where or how they’re stranded when it becomes apparent that somewhere out in the night is a sniper with an agenda–hand over one of the six who is keeping a secret and the rest can go on their way.

As the temperatures rise and the walls feel like they’re closing in on the 31 foot long trailer, tempers escalate and you begin to realize that everyone has some kind of secret.

I loved this book. The tension was palpable. The whole scenario is an intense, pulse-pounding situation. They’re all trapped in a trailer that’s 31 feet long. As the hours go by the stress factors get higher and higher–it gets hotter, time’s running out, and then there’s always paranoia. There are actual bullets flying–this book is no joke. Easily one of the most exciting reads I’ve had this year. It’s so intense that you actually feel as though you’re trapped with him in 31 feet of hell.

You need to put it at the top of your list. This my favorite book so far this year!

This was a wild ride. Six teens trapped in an RV with a sniper outside wanting to know someone's secret...

While the plot was extremely, ridiculously over the top, it absolutely kept me reading to see who had what secret, who the sniper outside was, and obviously which "Five Survive." I had a real love/hate relationship with 5/6 of the characters and just flat out hated one character from page one. I definitely think this was due to the way Jackson had to write all the characters to keep you suspicious of each one of them - I found myself rooting for them sometimes and then other times they had me hearing that meme voice "Oh No. It's Melanie. That's a shame, she was really nice." Like I said, wild ride. But that one character was just horrible 24/7 and had absolutely no positive at all and I wished I could punch him in the face more than once.

I would really really have loved one more piece to the epilogue documents at the end though... IYKYK.

I really enjoyed this book. I read it in one sitting! I did not want to put it down, I had to find out what happened. I would definitely recommend this book!

WOWOWOWOW. Holly Jackson has done it again. I was a huge fan of the “A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder” trilogy, This book was absolutely incredible. We follow 6 friends as they travel in an RV for spring break. Six friends together and indeed.. only five survive. They become stranded in the middle of nowhere with no cell service. There is someone out there, lurking, who wants them dead. They just find out how to survive and escape.

Okay first of all, the fact that I got to read this early is so exciting. Thank you to Delacorte Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read “Five Survive.” This book was super fast paced and intense. I caught myself holding my breath for so much of this book, anxiously awaiting what would happen next. The banter between characters was just *chef’s kiss* and the twists and turns were simply captivating. All I can say is.. READ THIS BOOK!

This might be the road trip from hell. One RV, six friends, 8 hours and only five survive. Who wants them dead, who is the target and who is a liar?
.
This is a solid YA mystery which Jackson is quickly becoming the queen of. This would make for a great movie to tv limited series.
.
Thank you @randomhouse @prhaudio and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

Holly Jackson grabs our eyeballs from the jump with this one. I was immediately there on that road trip with the whole crew and stayed there with them all night. I basically read this book in real time.
Red is an unreliable narrator who has secrets. Then again, so does everyone else in that RV at the time. Her best friend Maddy, their friends Simon and Arthur, and their chaperones on this doomed spring break trip, Maddy’s older brother, Oliver and his girlfriend, Reyna. Every. Last. One.
When they get lost on the way, they find themselves on the backroads with a flat tire in the middle of absolute nowhere. However, they soon find that the flat tire is no accident. Within moments of fixing it, all four of their tires are immediately shot out. Someone in the fields around them has a gun.
The group soon finds themselves stuck in the RV trying to come up with a plan on how to escape. Until they begin to hear a voice from a walkie talkie that tells them that they have until morning to reveal the identity of the person with a certain secret.
But who is it? As the night wears on, the group realizes that everyone in the RV seems to be hiding something.
Red has a feeling that this has to do with her plan. The plan she has to be able to get her dad help. A plan to help Red herself go to college, something that has been out of her reach since her mother, the Chief of Police, was executed in cold blood a couple years before. But there’s no way they could know, right? And she can’t reveal the plan. The plan is the only thing she has that can help her, the only way she can get revenge for her mom.
However, as things begin to unravel and logic takes a vacation, long hidden secrets begin to chip away at the group. Before long, they realize that fate has unknowingly woven its sticky web around the six friends, and one will not be able to get out of its clutches alive.

A lot of the characters in this book were sympathetic, with one major exception and I absolutely hated them with a passion. I ended up yelling at my Kindle a few times in utter exasperation that they were getting away with their irrational and harmful behavior. I love books like this, ones that bring out my passionate side. I absolutely adored it.

Thank you so much Random House, Delacourte Press, and Netgalley for the advanced copy of Five Survive by Holly Jackson in exchange for this fair and honest review.

Five Survive
2.5 ✨
First off just the biggest thank you for this ARC from @randomhouse and @Delacorte Press and Holly Jackson I love you and will always be so excited to read your work!!

It makes me so sad to say it, this was a huge miss for me…

Read if you like:
A closed door thriller
Unlikable characters
An unreliable narrator
Road Trips (you might not after reading this though! Lol)

What this was missing for me:
More backstory for the characters
Less redundancy
Maybe some flashbacks to breakup the monotony of being in the RV the entire setting
Oliver was so unrealistic to me, I like antagonist to have something likable about them. This wasn’t just a classic “douchebag” character, it literally didn’t make sense, and felt unbelievable imo.
WTF was up with the curtains?! Lol

I’ve been frankly putting off writing this because this was such a bummer since I was SO excited to read this one since GGG series is one of my favorites of all time! I’ll happily read the next one she writes but this was a flop for me…

Do you post reviews for books you didn’t love? I hate doing this but I love reading them so I’m super torn on it, tell me below!

Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series is my absolute favourite YA crime/ murder mystery series so I was extremely excited to dive into Five Survive! As a stand-alone, it was a lot quicker paced and more plot driven than AGGGTM, but the premise and unreliable narrator made it to be a gripping read that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. I read a fair few thrillers but can honestly say the plot twist was a huge surprise!

The story follows 18 year old Red and her group of friends as they set off in an old RV for a spring break road trip. All of them have their own secrets and motivations for the trip, which becomes alarming clear when the van is mysterious targeted by a sniper. Alone in the middle of nowhere with no mobile service and only each other, they’re forced to try to work together to meet the snipers demands and find their way to freedom. The sniper wants just one thing if they want to walk away unscathed— a secret. He won’t say what it is or who has it, only that one of them holds a dangerous truth and the rest of them will die of the sniper doesn’t receive it by the end of the eight hour deadline.

I loved the tight framing of the novel. It all takes place over the course of a single night. Eight hours where plans are made, betrayals happen and suspicions are rife. I was on the edge of my seat for the entirety, growing more and more tense as each hour passed. I was lucky enough to have the time to read it in a single sitting, an experience I’d highly recommend!

As I mentioned at the start of the review, Red as an unreliable narrator was an intriguing element to the story. Still raw after the unexpected death of her mother and dealing with some serious money issues, she’s battling more than just a murderous sniper. Observant, distracted and selfless, I found Red’s head the perfect place to view the unfolding story from. Unreliable narrators work so well for thrillers and Holly Jackson did a great job with the trope.

Overall, I loved Five Survive and it was great to see Holly Jackson go off with a bang after moving on from Pip and Ravi’s adventures. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to anything else she might write!

Overall I liked the story, loved the ending, but struggled with the pacing. For a YA novel it had some pretty gruesome imagery.

For how high-stakes the synopsis was this book was a slow burn (like setting fire to damp cardboard). The first half of the book the dialogue dragged the story along and I struggled through one chapter at a time.

Then around the halfway point the "thrill" in this thriller started to pick up. I read the second half of this book in one sitting because it was edge-of-your-seat action packed. I enjoyed the ending and how everything fell into place.

This was my first read by Holly Jackson and I'm interested to see how 'A Good Girls Guide to Murder' compares.

This was decent...a little far-fetched for me. 6 teenagers set out on a Spring Break trip in a borrowed RV and get lost on their first overnight stop. They quickly find that someone is out to get them when they realize that their flat tire was no accident. Someone is trying to scare them and possibly kill one or more of them. The story focuses on trying to figure out who has is holding the secret that the killer/stalker wants to know and how the characters are going to survive in the process. While it is suspenseful, it just wasn't what I had hoped. I did not predict the ending though, which is a positive. I would recommend, but won't rave about it.

Holly Jackson might just be the queen of YA thriller/crime fiction.

Wow, I enjoyed this! Finished it in one sitting. This book is low on the ~teenage drama~ and there are HIGH stakes that keep you invested the whole time. It felt like a mix of a YA version of No Exit and One of Us is Lying while also simultaneously being singularly and totally it's own.

My only gripes: not sure how I feel about Arthur's ending, other than that I feel like it kind of ruins the potential for a sequel, which is a bit disappointing. I also feel like one half of the RV (Red/Arthur/Oliver) were better fleshed out than the other half (Maddy/Simon/Reyna).

High points: **SPOILERS** the scene where Oliver throws Red out of the RV had my heart POUNDING. Arthur, for the most part, was a delightful character. I loved the use of mixed media out the end as well.

Thank you to Random House Children's, Delacorte Press, and Holly Jackson for the advance review copy in exchange for my free and honest review! 4.5 stars, rounded up.

A huge Thank You to The author, The publisher and NetGalley for providing the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.
This is my favorite newest obsession.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this early e-arc of Five Survive!

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔
🌪️ love a good twist
🛻 enjoy roads trips
🤥 are a good liar
🔒 like locked door mysteries

• 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄

When Red and her friends decide to travel down to Louisiana from Pennsylvania via an RV for their senior Spring Break trip, they find themselves trapped on an abandoned road with a sniper unwilling to let them leave.

• 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐓’𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓

Red is a senior on her way to enjoy Spring Break with her friends, Maddy, Simon, and Author, and their chaperones, Oliver, Maddy’s older brother, and his girlfriend, Reyna. But as the first night begins to wind down, they find themselves lost on a back road rather than at their first campsite. When a tire blows, the group gets out and replaces it. As they start to leave, all four tires are suddenly blown out. Confused and now terrified, the group eventually discovers they are being held hostage on this remote road in the middle of South Carolina with no cell reception and no one around for miles. Then the sniper tells them that someone is hiding a secret and must divulge it, or else everyone will die tonight.

• 𝐌𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒

This was such a great thriller, and also my first Holly Jackson book! I loved Red’s character, but I have to say that I guessed her main twist really early on and was just waiting to see if I was correct. I did love the second and third twists though, as I didn’t see them! I also loved the feeling I got reading this story. I became invested in this group of friends (more like strangers!) and like I was there with the group, fighting against the evil lurking outside. I think this story would make an incredible movie.

This was entertaining! I read and enjoyed The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder so I was pretty excited to check out Holly Jackson’s newest offering. I was hooked by this story right away and wondered how things would work out. This book was filled with secrets and plenty of twists and turns. I am so glad that I decided to give this one a try.

Based on the book’s title, I had a good idea that one of the six on the trip in the RV was not going to make it home. I didn’t know who it was going to be but I sure knew who I hoped it would be pretty early on. I guess it is safe to say that one of these characters rubbed me the wrong way from the start. We see everything from Red’s point of view and I thought that she was a great character, although she had a few secrets of her own. I couldn’t wait to see how this group would handle everything being thrown at them. This book had plenty of action and a whole lot of secrets to keep things interesting.

Emma Galvin did an amazing job with the narration of this audiobook. She brought the story to life and quickly became the voice of Red for me. I thought that she did a great job of adding just the right amount of emotion into her reading. I found her voice to be pleasant and I had no problem listening to this book for hours at a time.

I would recommend this book to others. I thought that this was an exciting story that kept me guessing until the very end. I hope to read more of Holly Jackson’s work very soon.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Delacorte Press and Listening Library.