Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster UK Children’s and Chelsea Pitcher for the chance to read this book.
One year ago, there was a party. At the party, someone died. Five teens all played a part and up until now, no one has told the truth.
But tonight, the five survivors arrive at an isolated mansion in the hills, expecting to compete in a contest with a $50,00 prize… Instead, they realise they’ve been lured together by a person bent on revenge who wants to finally unravel the truth about what actually happened that deadly night, one year ago.
I was excited by the synopsis of this book and was sure I’d love it. It started well with an opening chapter that flashed back to the night of the party when a teenage boy was killed and a mysterious girl swears revenge on those who caused his demise. There was a sense of foreboding and eerie atmosphere that made me eager to keep reading. The following five chapters introduced our five main characters and I loved that each got their own chapter where we learned about them and snippets of how they were implicated in the events of the party.
Unfortunately, as the characters gathered together at the mansion to compete for the scholarship the story began to lose it’s way. While there were some creepy elements at this point, such as the rooms they were all given, I felt these were not explored to their full potential and became secondary to the asinine antics of the characters, who also became overly clichéd and one-dimensional. My initial connection to Ruby faltered and I didn’t feel enough for any of the characters to really hold an interest in what happened to them.
The atmosphere and tension did increase a little as you reached the story’s climax but the fact that the bad guy had been obvious pretty much all along took away that edge-of-your-seat rush to get to the big, exciting reveal.
The author of this book does have a very poetic writing style in places that I loved, but sadly the lack of mystery and suspense took away from my overall enjoyment of the novel.
Out December 27th.
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