This one took me a bit to get into. I didn't feel an overwhelming investment in any of characters which made it more difficult for me. However, I did think the plot of the story moved along quickly. Overall, I think people who enjoy a suspenseful story without the creep factor will enjoy this book.

Ten years ago there was an accident on the way to a high school volunteer trip. Nine students survived, while another 10 and 2 teachers did not. Every since the survivors meet up for a week at the anniversary. Cassidy wants to skip and put this all behind her, but when she gets a text from an unknown number with the obituary of one of the survivors, Cass changes her mind. But once she arrives, things do not feel like the Years before. And when another survivor goes missing, Cass begins to feel like something sinister is at play.

I have read every book by this author. I Love her writing style and this book was no exception, though it was not my favorite of hers- I would rank this one in the middle. The twist seemed a little forced, but it was not super obvious, like in a lot of other thrillers. I liked how realistic all the characters were, but I wish there were more chapters from their points of view.

Thank you NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I had a hard time putting this book down. I found myself staying up way too late, turning pages to find out what happened! The secrecy sprinkled on each page kept me intrigued the whole time. Mysterious and downright unputdownable!

This was a great fast pace mystery. The dual timeline wasn’t confusing or lost. It helped pull the story along. Megan Miranda always does a great job & I genuinely enjoy the majority of her books.

I had really high hopes for this one! However, it really let me down.

My biggest problem with it was how slow it was. I’m not a fan of slow thrillers. I wasn’t interested in the plot of the book until about 60% in. Even then, I wasn’t super interested in the overall story line. The story could have been shorter.

I didn’t vibe with any of the characters, but they were okay. None of the characters were hiding super big secrets (except for maybe one). I called the “twist” early on. There wasn’t really a shock factor for me. That’s always a let down-when it comes to thrillers.

This one just wasn’t for me.

Thanks Netgalley and Simon & Schustern for the advanced copy of this book, in exchange for my honest thoughts.

The Only Survivors is a twisty novel that kept me on the edge of my seat. Miranda writes stories that are unputdownable and fully engaging. While my feelings about the end result are mixed, the reading experience was exactly what I look for in a thriller: a fast paced page turner that kept me guessing. I didn’t guess the twist, but looking back Miranda artfully gave you subtitle suggestions that could have lead a more astute thriller reader in the right direction. For me, that is something that I look for most in a thriller. Sophisticated foreshadowing.

Thank you Megan Miranda, Scribner, and Netgalley for my advanced review copy. My opinions are my own.

Plot - 4
Writing and Editing - 4
Character Development - 5
Personal Bias - 4
Final Score - 4.25

I have devoured every Megan Miranda book I've read and The Only Survivors is no exception! I loved the setting and Miranda is fantastic at writing suspenseful, slow burn mysteries. The story is atmospheric and tense, I couldn't put it down!

In this slow burn thriller, ten years ago Cassidy and a small group of her fellow high school seniors survived a horrific crash into the river on a school sponsored trip. Each year, this group of “only survivors” of the title - who never were really all friends either then or now, gather on the anniversary of the accident at a beach house on the Outer Banks. Cassidy plans to skip this year, but then ends up going when she finds out one of their group overdosed a few months back. But for a number of reasons, things are even more tense this year than usual and the atmosphere slowly becomes more ominous. This is all interspersed with flashbacks, in reverse chronological order hour by hour, of what happened the night of the crash.

I usually love Megan Miranda’s thrillers, but this one fell a little short for me. It just felt so generic thriller in its whole premise, and the way the flashbacks of the past were doled out was kind of annoying, building suspense by withholding from the reader information that the character knows. All the characters felt a little flat and undeveloped, and although I wanted to know what happened in the past and what was going on in the present, it didn’t really generate a true atmosphere of suspense for me. There were some interesting questions raised about survivors guilt, and I did enjoy it somewhat, it just all felt kind of mediocre to me. That being said, my taste in thrillers often diverges from the mainstream, so if you’re a thriller lover, there’s probably a good chance you will love it.

A slow burn read about 9 survivors getting together on an annual trip since their trauma that happened 10 years ago. The main POV is spoken from Cassidy in the now accompanied by flashbacks shared by the other survivors during the tragic event.

The reader is totally in the blind in what exactly happened to this group, as they have kept each others secrets about what happened on that trip 10 years ago.

This book gave ya thriller vibes. All in all, if you enjoy her previous books then you should also enjoy this one.

5 Stars is not enough for THE ONLY SURVIVORS! It's not uncommon for reviewers to state: "This book carried me away." I'm sure I've said it myself. THE ONLY SURVIVORS literally took me out of my everyday life. Family members spoke to me: I remained unaware. Repeatedly I stepped outside to see if the "Storm" had yet arrived. [Read the novel]. I flipped between Appalachian East Tennessee and North Carolina's Outer Banks. Every. single. page. seemed to bring yet another new revelation. What an expansive Imagination!

Much love and thanks to the Instagram reviewer who provided me with the correct Scientific term: "Thalassaphobia"--to replace what I had always called "Hydrophobia" [a condition suffered by Animals and Humans infected by Rabies: not the same!]
Much gratitude also to Author Megan Miranda, who inspired me to devour every single novel she writes!!

I love Megan Miranda. I feel like she is an inventive author who is doesn't follow the typical "thriller" formula. That being said, this book wasn't my favorite of hers. I still enjoyed it and thought it was an enjoyable read, but I like others of hers better. I did like the twist at the end, I did not see that coming. I also liked the character study that was done about each of the main characters. We really got to know them so we could try to figure out what was going on with each of them. The timeline going back and forth took some getting used to, but it was an interesting way to tell the story. Overall, I thought it was an entertaining book with a fresh new way of telling the story from the past.

When two buses carrying high schoolers on a class trip end up swept away in a river, only nine survivors make it out. A decade later, seven are left, and the bonds and secrets they've held are starting to unravel.

I stayed up way too late because I couldn't sleep without knowing what had actually happened and why. No one could be trusted as a reliable narrator, so everyone was suspect, which had me second-guessing everything I thought I'd figured out. I managed to predict a couple plot points, but the final twist was something I never saw coming.

This book moved along at a great pace and had enough turns and surprises to keep me guessing all the way to the end! My only critique is that it felt like it ended very quickly…like the end could have been drawn out just a little more.

I love everything written by Megan! She’s a great writer and I always breeze through her books not wanting to put the book down! This was a fantastic read and I highly recommend it!

This book was how I cleansed my palate between fantasy books. I needed a little dose of thrill. I love the dual timeline that Megan Miranda uses to tell the story, and how the present moves forward while the past works backward giving you little details before revealing what fully happened in the past. I loved the atmospheric, slow burn thriller that this story was. I can't say that I really liked the characters all that much, but I am not sure I was really supposed to. In the end, I found the bad guy to be a little predictable, but there was a twist that I was not expecting. So, I would probably bump this up to a 4.5 star read. Overall, this was a fun read and I will definitely read more from Megan Miranda!
Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for an ARC of this book for an honest review.

10 years ago a tragedy filled with terrible loss, brought 9 survivors together. 8 have been meeting every year to reunite and keep each other in check. Only 7 remain this year. With a brutal storm impending and the reunion in full swing, will the secrets they’ve kept hidden, keep them from saving one another?

WOW. Just WOW. I managed to finish this in less than 24 hours and boy was it worth it. I’ve been a fan of Megan Miranda since “All the Missing Girls” and will continue to be a fan after absorbing “The Only Survivors”

Miranda does an excellent job of interspersing the 7 days in the present with the 7 hours from then and making it very suspenseful without the predictability. Even when I think I know what is happening/has happened, there’s new pieces of information that show a deeper plot and forethought in the authors mind.

I will say that the big reveal wasn’t unexpected and felt more like a tell and tell than a show and tell. And light spoilers!!!!!!! (The motivations of the antagonist seemed to be the least developed part of this book as they were a bit all over the place and didn’t serve the purpose I think it was meant to).

That being said that ending floored me and I loved the subtle ways it was foreshadowed.

Great read and thank you to Netgalley and Megan Miranda for allowing me to read “The Last Survivors” in exchange for an honest review.

Ooh that twist! I wasn’t sure exactly where this book was going but I loved the outcome of it. Who do you save when you know not everyone will survive? How do guilt and trauma both play out in people as they grow apart but stay connected? I love how this author can leave little bread crumbs throughout the story that all come together in the end.

A group of survivors of a horrific van crash meet up every year on the anniversary of the event. This will be the tenth year, and what they did out there in the dark and rain all those years ago is finally catching up to them.

Told in alternating chapters between then and now, the story has a visceral feeling brought on by Megan Miranda's atmospheric setting of a lumbering shore house, The Shallows, set back from the dunes and the ocean in its seemingly private location. But there are things out of place - a sighting on the beach, a found object, things that show up in the house....

The book climbs like the switchbacks that led to the accident, and we learn more about each person's role in the accident's aftermath, until it all comes to a crescendo.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for this well told tale by Megan Miranda.

The Only Survivors was my first book by Megan Miranda and it won’t be my last! The book had a slower start but I got to the point where I couldn’t put it down! It was full of suspense and twists and turns. My kind of book!

I've been reading Megan Miranda since she began in YA and one of the things that I like most about her books is that 1) she's good at creating a feeling of confusion and suspense and 2) she's always willing to experiment with her narrative format.

In The Only Survivors, she's used these two techniques well. A group who survived a tragic accident in high school gathers every year, more to check on each other than to commemorate the event. This year, things seem even more off than usual, as one of them has died under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

The timeline moves from past to present, with each survivor getting a chapter in which they look back on the day of the tragedy. What happened? What are they hiding? And is someone now after them?

Really enjoyed this one!