Five Survive

By Holly Jackson. Pub date 11/29/22

5*s. Best enjoyed at night in the quiet, when you don’t know who could be out there.

Publisher’s Synopsis: 

“Red Kenny is on a road trip for spring break with five friends: Her best friend – the older brother – his perfect girlfriend – a secret crush – a classmate – and a killer. 

When their RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service, they soon realize this is no accident. They have been trapped by someone out there in the dark, someone who clearly wants one of them dead.

With eight hours until dawn, the six friends must escape, or figure out which of them is the target. But is there a liar among them? Buried secrets will be forced to light and tensions inside the RV will reach deadly levels. Not all of them will survive the night. . . . “

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.