From Road Trip to Nightmare: Five Survive

Eight hours. Six friends. One sniper. 

Five Survive by Holly Jackson is a stand-alone novel and a classic whodunit that keeps readers on the edge of their seats from start to end. It follows the narrative of 17-year-old Redford (Red) Kenny who is driving during spring break from Philadelphia to Gulf Shores, Alabama, with five other people: Maddy Lavoy (her best friend), Oliver (her college student brother), Reyna (Oliver’s girlfriend), and her high school classmates, Arthur and Simon.     

Red is a shy and quiet girl who cares deeply for the people she loves. Throughout the story, she seems to have slight issues with her memory and attention span. 

From the very start, it’s obvious that Red is dealing with multiple problems in her life. Her father is ill, money is a big problem, and her mother, a police officer, died four years ago while working on a mysterious case that had now been labeled redundant and unsolvable. Red, along with the others in the RV that day, had secrets. But little did she know, hers wasn’t even the worst of them. 

Despite the long trip, everyone was in a good mood. That was until the RV broke down in the middle of nowhere. Everyone knew this wasn’t an accident as all the wheels had been shot out one by one. A sniper was observing them from the shadows, and he was certain of their identities. Someone in the group had a secret that the sniper was willing to kill for. And Red thought it might’ve been her…

A series of events play out as the group desperately tries to get help as quickly as possible and find out whose secret it is that’s worth all their lives. In the small, claustrophobic RV, hidden secrets are forced to surface, and tensions within the group explode. 

For those of you who are familiar with and are fans of Holly Jackson’s other famous mystery trilogy, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, you will not be disappointed by this thriller!

The unceasingly terrifying premise, the intensity of the plot twists towards the finish, and the anxiety sparked by the presence of the sniper definitely leaves an impressionable mark on the reader and makes it difficult to put the book down!

Unlike other mysteries, there aren’t many characters that are introduced but we definitely get to know a lot of back stories, flashbacks, and bone-chilling information throughout the novel which makes for an amazing page-turner! 

Even the ending of the book itself, much like Holly Jackson’s As Good As Dead, left me staring at the ceiling for quite a while! There’s even some light humour along the way which made for a nice surprise, as most would expect a book like Five Survive to be dark and serious the whole time.

There were many attributes of a mystery novel that Holly Jackson executed perfectly. The story was filled with clues that readers could use to solve the puzzle alongside the characters without having to wait for them to realize it themselves. Over the course of the book, there were many pieces of crucial information dropped so seamlessly that it didn’t seem as though it was abrupt and solely for the plot to go forward. 

However, that being said, some scenes throughout the story felt somewhat anticlimactic and unrealistic. For the first half of the book, all of the characters were understandably trying to safeguard themselves from the ever-present threat, whereas the second half was more in-depth about trying to escape whilst uncovering the person who had the secret. If I was stuck in an RV in the middle of nowhere with a sniper who could shoot at any time, I probably wouldn’t try to do anything that would upset them. There were numerous times that the group did things that (some may perceive them as desperate) were not prudent decisions and got them in more trouble.   

Some of these moments made it feel like filler pages which didn’t really do much in the story but only elongated the process of finding out the ever-burning question: Who will survive?

Apart from that, I found myself genuinely immersed in this novel. The way everything unfolds and the descriptive language overall made for an amazing story! The writing felt illustrative and easy to follow. Like every perfect mystery novel, this story has you hooked from the very start and the foreshadowing, secrets, and perfect atmospheric setting made for the best book I’ve read in a long time!

I’d definitely recommend Five Survive to anyone who is either looking to get out of a reading slump or get back into the amazing world of mystery and thriller! Anyone looking for a fast-paced book with engaging dialogue, endearing characters, and adrenaline that keeps you flipping the pages wanting to know more, Five Survive will really make your day!