Holly Jackson is the author of the New York Times bestselling series A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, and international sensation with millions of copies sold worldwide. She graduated from the University of Nottingham, where she studied literary linguistics and creative writing, with a master's degree in English. She enjoys playing video games and watching true-crime documentaries so she can pretend to be a detective. She lives in London. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @HoJay92. You can find more of my reviews of her work here.
Red Kenny is on a road trip for spring break with five friends: her best friend and her older brother, his perfect girlfriend, a friend from school, and the guy Red wishes was more than a friend. But they won't make it to their destination. 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 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 . . . From the author of the New York Times and multimillion-copy bestselling A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series comes a new unforgettable thrill ride.
Five Survive is even more fast-paced and explosive than the A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series. This standalone novel takes place over the course of one night, where six friends/family members are trapped inside an RV by an active shooter. Each hour of the book is its own part, and they're pretty evenly divided, making the read feel fast-paced. In addition to the general storytelling structure (of how it takes place over one night), Jackson knows exactly how to get readers invested very quickly, so falling into the story and getting absorbed by it is so easy. I genuinely did not want to put the read down, and needed to know who survived the night. You won't be disappointed by the high stakes and twists of this novel, and my jaw dropped several times (admittedly the most near the end) while reading.
I was obsessed with how I felt like I couldn't trust any of the characters. I kept trying to guess who might be hiding a secret based on how everyone was behaving, but I was still taken aback. Because we're so close to Red's head while she narrates, you as a reader start to feel like you're inside the RV, and starting to not trust any of them, not even Red. Red's narration is super interesting—it's not said in the novel, but some people theorize she might have ADHD, and it's clear that she dissociates several times during the novel, making it hard to trust her as well, since she hides her own secrets from herself so well. I love unreliable narrators, especially when the narrator isn't super obvious about it because they trust themself and know themself, so finding out that I couldn't quite trust Red made for an even better reading experience. All-in-all, if you like reading about a cast stuck in a small space who are all suspicious of each other and lash out in different ways, I think you'll enjoy Five Survive.
One of my favorite parts of the A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series is the use of multimedia to tell the story. No multimedia takes place during the eight hours in the RV, but there are some of those elements at the end, including a transcript, a news report, and a letter. This specific story stands better without the insertion of multimedia throughout the narrative, so that Red's narration isn't interrupted during the very fraught evening and early morning hours they're all trapped. I was super surprised by the end and the revelations in the final multimedia items, and I almost wished there was a handful more of them to read. I loved the letter ending, and I wish I knew the answer that's posed at the end, but the open-ended nature really appeals to me, so I just genuinely love how Jackson was able to combine this new storytelling method with one of my favorite storytelling elements of her previous books.
I can't wait to read more from Holly Jackson! In the meantime, you can find her on Instagram and Twitter @HoJay92. You can find more of my reviews of her work here.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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