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Five Survive Book Review
Five Survive was written by bestselling author Holly Jacskon who wrote the series A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder, with Five Survive being released in November of 2022, it was highly anticipated amongst Holly Jackson fans. With this being another young adult thriller/ mystery many fans were excited to see how this novel would compare to the hugely popular AGGGTM trilogy.
Storyline/ plot
Five Survive is told in third person POV told through the perspective of main character Redford Kenny, as we follow her and five of her friends as they get held hostage within an RV while traveling to the beach for spring break.
Within the RV we have Red, Maddy and her big brother Oliver, his girlfriend Reyna and two classmates, Arthur and Simon. While driving towards their campsite to rest for the night, one of the tyres on the RV goes flat while driving down a small, secluded road. After changing the tyre with no explanation as to what could have flattened it, they all get back into the RV ready to resume their journey, before the other three tyres are shot at as well as their fuel tank, leaving the group stranded.
Soon after the shock and panic settles, the group seem to be getting an explanation, through a walkie talkie that was given to them, by the person who seemed to have been the cause of the flat tyres. One of them inside the RV has a secret, and no one will be released until that person exposes the secret. They try to escape, they will get shot.
With the story taking place over the span of eight hours, the group slowly falls apart, with some characters trying to override others, secrets being told, and relationships on the rocks, they are still nowhere near the secret the sniper is looking for
As the hours passed, two strangers were shot dead. The group now know the gravity of the situation, forcing each of them to lose their minds, with one mole in the group and one secret to tell it’s a race against time, with six friends in the RV only five will make it out alive.
One sniper, one secret, and years worth of lies and betrayal coming to light, who will live and who will die?
Writing style
With this book being within third person POV, we get to observe every character, including the main protagonist, still through our own eyes. We get to learn how they see how they think and what was going through their mind through the whole book. It was also nice how the story was separated into eight parts to represent the eight hours they were in the RV which kept the story easy to follow as well as it keeping a nice pace to the book.
Pros/ cons
I personally really liked this book,I enjoyed the concept and the way it was executed as well as it having multiple subplots within the book to make the story much deeper than just six teens in an Rv. Every character served a purpose, although one character in particular was extremely unlikable he served a good purpose within the book which made him tolerable. The pace was really good, nothing was spread too far, everything linked together and everything that was mentioned was necessary for the story ahead to make sense, which gave everything that little bit more of an edge.
Conclusion
Overall I gave this book four stars, although I was a little apprehensive to read this as I didn’t enjoy A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. I am happy to say though this book was much more to my taste, even though it’s still a young adult mystery it held my attention much more, the pacing was better and the story overall was more interesting to me. This was a very nice quick read for me, kept me interested and still held those thriller elements well for a young adult novel.