In this easily bingable YA thriller, a group of friends head into the woods for a night of camping. With an unsurprising turn of events, one of them does not come home. Told from the point of view of a police interrogation, this book was a quick read that was hard to put down.
I never know how I feel about YA thrillers, so many books in the genre rely on unlikable characters to move the plot along. It was exciting for me to find this not the case in this book. I actually liked almost all of the characters and found it interesting to watch them develop, even though we are only seeing them from the eyes of a police transcript. From their first introductions, each character was able to showcase not only their personalities, but also small glimpses into what aspects of their lives helped nurture those personalities. It is one thing to be told about a character; that tends to be uninteresting and pointless. It is another thing to have a character tell us about themselves. The unique storytelling of this book really allowed for the characters to share their voices.
I have very mixed feelings when it comes to the mystery itself. Coming back once again to the storytelling, it was a great deal of fun to try and guess what direction the case was going to go. There were many times when I found myself trying to catch one of the characters in a lie or second guessing the actual order of the chain of events, which really made the case fun. However, the storytelling device also prevented me from feeling fully satisfied by the conclusion of the mystery because all I saw were the characters’ reactions, not the first hand experience. This also led to a disappointing solution and me closing the book with an undercurrent of disappointment.
Please check trigger warnings
3.5 stars
Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for my honest review.
The Novel Llama 