This was my first read from this author and I'm not sure how. The cover and hype i'd seen is what made me request, but i found myself really enjoying the story. I can't wait to read another--thanks for the gifted copy!

This multi-POV story features single mom Adele who travels to a remote island in the Atlantic to participate in an extreme game of hide-and-seek hosted by Maverick Dillan and his company Extreme Games and Insane Challenges. So what can go wrong? This was a quick read, locked room mystery with a mysterious disappearance. I wasn’t sure what to expect with the storyline of an abandoned wife and kids and an online viewing platform of extreme adventure but the chilling setting made for a great backdrop for fear and dread. if you are looking for a heart-pounding thriller that combines the high-stakes tension of a survival game with the dark underbelly of social media spectacle pick this book up!

“I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”
The book was decent. We have a game of hide and seek, where the last person standing can win some money. How easy would that be? A group of people comes together on an island from different backgrounds, though the one who really plays a big part is a single mother, Adele. After her husband disappears after some wrong choices in life, Adele is trying to make ends meet the best she can, so when the opportunity arrives, she jumps at it with the help of her son. Now, with the game going on, her son, on the other hand, plays video games, and we get to see what is going on with that. I will say I did assume that the person her son was playing with was someone close.
I think the author did a great job of having the island come across as spooky and mysterious.
I did like the element of surprise with who was planning on taking Maverick down; it was one I was not expecting.
Overall, a decent story. I would have liked more of the hide-and-seek game going on, but that may have made the story too long.

The ultimate game of hide and seek, with million dollar stakes. A ‘haunted’ estate on Falcao island where survival comes with high risks. Mom Adele is surviving on zero income with her two teens since her husband is hiding from the law.
If she can win this dangerous game the money would be her saving grace. Intense characters and some twists to keep you on your toes.

This was a great read! My first book by Lisa Unger and I definitely will be going back into her catalog for more! A new favorite author!

I appreciated the intriguing premise of this book: a group of social media influencers gathers on an island in Portugal to participate in a game. As the story unfolds, the game takes an unexpected turn, leading to a thrilling and chaotic sequence of events that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

I tried picking this up a few times but could not get into the story. I really wanted to like this one - I've read many books by one of the authors and loved their books, so thought I would enjoy this one, but sadly this was not the case for this one.

Giving it 1 star because I had to give a star rating.

Thank you for this early copy! I would rate this is 2.5/5. I was interested enough to finish, but had a hard time getting into it. Once I figured out who all the characters were, since there were so many, I enjoyed it a lot more. I did love the idea of an extreme hide and seek game, but I wish the story had been more focused on that instead of everything else.

Everyone wants to be an influencer these days. These main characters are no different. Extreme is doing another Hide and Seek game, with the winner winning a million dollars. The contestants are internet influencers with a variety of followers and types of content. Cody was a survivalist. Melinda is the youngest person to climb 7 of the highest summits in the world. And, Adele is a mom with exercise content.

This season of Extreme Hide and Seek is located on an isolated island, in a falling down luxury hotel, with locals that are less than pleased that this is happening. On top of all the safety issues, there's a massive storm on the way, drama, and a possible extra person on the island.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but didn't love it. I found at times the story jumped back and forth without a warning and sometimes felt lost. I love multiple POVs, but there was a lot going on at times.

Thank you to Netgalley, Lisa Unger, and the publishers for this free ebook. This review is 100% my own and honest opinion.

This book kept me turning the pages to find out what would happen next! A wild ride that keeps you guessing what's gonna happen next. Highly recommend picking this book up you won't be disappointed 5 stars.

Charismatic daredevil and extreme adventurer Maverick Dillan invites you to the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. But as the players gather on Falcao Island, the event quickly spirals into a chilling test of survival. A storm rages as a deadly threat stalks the contestants, turning the challenge into something far more sinister than the social media stunt it was intended to be....

I love Lisa Unger books - and was very excited for this one! I think like her other books there was a great premise and very strong writing. The social media depiction was on point, and I liked how caught up the influencers were for fame and money. It did lack a little bit in the thriller department. I was hoping for more creepy island vibes and less of the confusing POV/multiple storylines. If you want a slow burn with a fun setting, lot's of secrets and strange pacing, then this one's for you!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy.

I think at the end of the day this book was okay. It had a decent premise. Characters were okay. I did get a bit turned around at several points.

Rating: 3/5

When a mother is left behind to pick up the pieces of her husband embezzling money and disappearing, Adele chooses what she thinks will be a life changing amount of money on a game show. Extreme hide and seek from a famous YouTuber. Little does she know that the whole experience will bring about so many more questions and answers from her past. This mystery thriller will keep you questioning what’s a part of the game and what is real!

thank you to netgalley for the e-arc. a good thriller brings together all the puzzle pieces by the end and this one did not do so. there was a lot of repetition but i guess thats what you get when characters dont make sense together and the story goes in different directions.

I think this story idea has potential and would have significantly benefited from reimaginging some of the characters, as it was incredibly difficult for my millennial mind not to make comparisons to pop culture references of my time. For example: Steve Irwin and Mr. Beast, anyone?

It was also tough to root for any of the characters. Adele was just "fine" to me... I wasn't convinced she was interested enough to have an online presence to warrant her acceptance into the game.

Lastly, the abundance of plot devices also watered down their impacts for me. If I were to create a visual map of my understanding of the characters, conflicts, plot devices, and potential overlaps it would look as if a 5 year old tried to re-create Shoots & Ladders.

I know Unger can write an enthralling thriller. This book, I think, is a result of potential publisher demand to be topical and competitive with other thrillers coming out in 2025, but it missed the mark for me.

*Thank you, NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing, for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

I received a free eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. But it was strangely formatted and hard to read, so I waited for a hold on a library copy instead!

This was reasonably entertaining, but I feel like it’s trying to do too much. There are a lot of narrative threads out there, and while nothing is necessarily left unresolved, it also feels like nothing really gets developed very well (and the timeline is hella wonky - if I had been reading this as an ARC, I would have assumed that would be fixed by publish time, but this is the actual copy!).

Anyway. There’s this guy named Maverick Dillan who runs different Extreme challenges that allegedly raise a lot of money for charity. It’s unclear if the challenge is always hide & seek, or if that’s just the gimmick he’s currently fixated on. He’s run into some bad press lately, because a year ago at a haunted house hide & seek challenge, one of the hiders disappeared and hasn’t been heard from since. The court of public opinion blames Mav, and like any good influencer, he spends lots of time ruminating on how much some people seem to hate him. His newest challenge is set to take place on Falcao Island, in an abandoned resort. This catches the eye of single mother Adele, whose husband committed some kind of business fraud (tax fraud probably? Some kind of white collar rich dude crime) and abandoned the family about 5 years earlier. She’s been struggling to make ends meet ever since, and could really use a million dollars!

Obviously Adele is selected, she travels to the island and meets the other contestants (which…there are only meant to be 4 people total? That seems extremely lame. I suspect this is because there’s already so much else going on that asking readers to keep track of like 6 more hiders on top of all the other characters would be pushing it). And it becomes clear that Something Isn’t Quite Right. The islanders are hostile towards the production, Mav is being all shady, and one of Adele’s fellow contestants is less interested in the contest itself and more interested in getting justice for her friend Chloe (the aforementioned missing girl).

Through all of this we follow Adele, and Maverick, and his girlfriend Angeline, and BOTH of Adele’s children, plus some random inserts from a podcast about Chloe and message board posts about the game and Mav in general. There’s the story of what’s happening on the island with the hiders. There’s the ongoing implosion of the Extreme crew. There’s Adele’s children watching her from home. There’s whatever went on with Adele’s erstwhile husband. And then there’s a freaking murder that ends up being barely a blip because there’s JUST TOO MUCH plot!

My take: I don’t think we needed Adele - or at least she didn’t need to be such a significant character. Make the story about the Extreme crew instead - is Mav really stealing from the company? Are some of his “friends” plotting against him? What actually happened to Chloe? Who’s trying to sabotage this current competition? There's enough going on that Adele’s drama with her kids and missing husband doesn’t have much impact, because it’s really kind of derailing the rest of the plot. There’s a completely different book here about Adele and her kids and her husband’s crimes that I’d frankly rather read than the hide and seek nonsense.

Finally, the timeline is weird. There’s a lot of unnecessary jumping around - we get these random chapters that I think are supposed to represent videos filmed during the game, presented as flash-forwards. But once we get to the actual playing of the game, it almost seems like it’s over before it begins. I had a super hard time figuring out how long they’d been on the island and what was actually happening in sequence versus being presented in a flash-forward for suspense. Throw in the Chloe stuff and it’s a really muddled mess.

*A small rant: Can I just say it bugs me to no end when authors try to come up with alternative names for popular social media sites? It’s SO jarring and cheesy, and it always takes me out of the narrative trying to figure out which site they’re actually referring to. I don’t know what the protocol is - I’ve read plenty of books about influencers and whatnot that use the actual app names, so it’s clearly something you’re able to do. I don’t know if there’s some kind of copyright fee? Either way, it feels cheap and takes me out of the story. We’ve got WeWatch (YouTube), Pop (Snapchat), and Photogram (Instagram) just to name a few. Like…if you’re going to use all of these things, your publisher should shell out for whatever lets you use the actual names. Rant over.*

Lisa Unger is an author whose books I know will always deliver. Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 was the perfect recipe for a thriller – a group of really unique characters, an isolated setting, a social media/reality TV kind of competition, everyone keeping secrets, and lots of twist and turns.

In addition, it had a really great commentary on social media in our current world.

Welcome to Falcao Island: tropical paradise by day, twisted death trap by night. Social media sensation and all-around adrenaline junkie Maverick Dillan (yes, that’s his actual name) invites thrill-seekers to the “ultimate game” — an epic hide-and-seek event that promises fame, fortune, and probably a killer TikTok montage. But things go off the rails real quick when the influencers become the influenced... by fear, that is.

Enter Adele: single mom, unlikely contestant, and woman with zero patience for nonsense. She didn’t sign up for murder tag in a monsoon, but here she is, dodging danger while trying to get back to her kids. If you like rooting for reluctant heroes and mothers with grit, she’s got that vibe. Unfortunately, despite being pitched as our main character, she’s often shoved out of the spotlight by a cast of supporting players who really want their fifteen minutes of fame—even if it means dying for it.

The plot comes with a storm (literally), masked figures, hidden agendas, and more betrayal than a season finale of The Bachelor. It’s tense. It’s atmospheric. But... it’s also kinda slow. Like, "we’re halfway through and still talking about everyone's backstory" slow. The real action doesn’t hit until the 60-70% mark, and by then, you may already be mentally packing your bags.

As for the twist? It tiptoes in like it forgot it was supposed to make an entrance. The ending felt more like a “Wait, that’s it?” than a mic drop.

Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 has a solid premise and strong writing, but it plays hide-and-seek a little too long with the good stuff. It's not Lisa Unger’s strongest, but if you're in the mood for a popcorn thriller with stormy vibes and influencer drama, it might just scratch that itch.

Big thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the ARC.

A little slow for me in the beginning but really ramps up as you get to the meat of the story! The hook for this one really grabbed my attention. A deadly game of hide and seek set on a remote, abandoned island? Yes please! A really fun read with a super colorful cast of characters.

This book was not for me. I thought the concept was really good and I was excited to hear more about the games, but that wasn't the focal point (which is fine, I just had different expectations. I thought one "twist" was kind of unexplained but that could have been me. I think I may just not be a fan of the authors writing style, but I know plenty of people who enjoy her books. Overall I would give this book a 2/5. The pro was that it was a fast read.