Five Survive by Holly Jackson

Book Review

Title: Five Survive by Holly Jackson

Genre: Thriller

Rating: 5 Stars

After reading A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and the rest of that trilogy I couldn’t wait to get into Five Survive. All I knew beforehand was it is following six friends on a road trip when they break down and are targeted by a sniper and have to survive the night. This seems to have a lot of things I like in books, high stakes from the beginning, takes place over a short period of time and Jackson’s writing in general is easy to fly through. The opening to Five Survive introduces us to the characters we are going to be following, Red, Oliver, Maddy, Simon, Reyna and Arthur. It sets up the connections between them as Maddy and Oliver are siblings, Oliver is dating Reyna and most have known Red for her entire life supporting her through the hardest period of her life, the death of her mother. The group are going away for Spring Break in an RV because Red couldn’t afford to fly when they quickly get lost after losing signal on their phones and break down.

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As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, the group work together in order to put on the spare tyre and get moving again since they are pretty close to the campsite where they will be staying. However, almost immediately after setting off all the other tyres blow out and no one can figure out why. Red is standing a little apart from the group when she notices a small red dot travelling the length of the RV and figures out that someone is shooting at them. At that very moment, they shoot out the gas tank, meaning the group are well and truly stuck now. Initially, they think they have just wondered onto someone’s land but Red gets the feeling that there is something else going on here because they wouldn’t have had a reason to shoot out one tyre, wait until they put the spare on before shooting the rest and the gas tank. These actions speak to someone who doesn’t want them going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, the entire group is scared but the shooter gets in contact with them via a radio he left behind. In these communication he claims that someone has a secret that he wants and he won’t let them go until he has it. Oliver being one of the oldest takes charge and they immediately begin coming up with a plan to escape but pinpointing the shooter’s location and fleeing in the other direction. This plan almost works but as Oliver is ready to jump out the window, the shooter lets them know that there is more than one of them, meaning they are surrounded and unable to escape no matter what they do. This is a blow to the group and some want to think about the reason they are there but no one wants to give up their secrets especially Red who has been thinking about a plan that no one knows about, this entire time and this could be about her but it could also very easily be about someone else.

As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, we do get the first couple of secrets to come out. The first belongs to Simon who confesses that his uncle’s business isn’t entirely legal and that the RV they are in might be stolen. This doesn’t seem like something people would hold them captive over but it is the beginning and this prompts Reyna to spill the secrets she and Oliver have. It turns out that Reyna has been cheating on Oliver with a boy named Jack for several months. One night, Jack confronted her about leaving Oliver and when Oliver returned from the bar she pretended not to know Jack. A fight ensued and Oliver hit Jack hard enough to cause a bleed on his brain eventually killing him and this seems like the reason they might be there because Jack had four brothers and this definitely seems revenge motivated. However, the killer says that isn’t the secret he looking for and with Oliver now in the clear, since he only seems focused on protecting himself, he begins turning on the other, pressuring them to spill their own secrets.

As we cross into the second half of the novel, the shooter is getting impatient but there seems to be a kink in his plan when an elderly couple returning from the birth of their first grandchild sees the lights on the RV and stops to ask if they need help. The shooter warns them to send them away or he will kill them but Oliver tries to use them since this might be their only chance of getting help. He tries to pass a note to the man, Don but the killer notices and kills both Don and his wife Joyce sending everyone into a panic. Oliver is furious and thinks that the RV must be bugged since that is the only way that the shooter could have known about the note and begins tearing the RV apart to find the bug. Even after an extensive search they don’t find anything but with panic and tensions rising, Red realises something. She knows that the secret must be about her and she finally brings her secret out in the open. It turns out she is the secret witness in the mafia trial that Oliver and Maddy’s mother is working on and these must be the other members of the group coming to silence her. Now knowing that Oliver demands that they throw Red out so the rest of them can survive but the group doesn’t want to do that so they put it to a vote.

As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, the group vote for Red to stay but Oliver takes matters into his own hands, physically throwing Red out of the RV into the night. For minutes Red sits there thinking she is going to die before Arthur can subdue Oliver and get Red back into the RV where she has a completely meltdown. Oliver doesn’t understand why the shooter didn’t kill her and there seems to be more to Red’s secret that she isn’t willing to give up. Knowing that Red won’t be shot and that Don’s truck is still there, Oliver convinces Maddy to dress up as Red given their similar appearance. He wants her to take the truck and get help but as soon as she makes a move for the car, she is shot in the leg and Red leaps to her rescue. With Maddy bleeding out, they don’t have much time but Oliver is convinced Red is working with the shooter and won’t let anyone leave, so they return to their first plan of trying to signal outside help, they finally get a break when Red picks up some network engineers coming to bring the phone lines back up and radios them for help. Just as she does though the true enemy reveals themselves and this person has been working with the shooter the entire time. Red doesn’t want to believe that someone within the group, that one of her friends has caused this. All this panic and tension is coming to a head now as Oliver seems truly unhinged willing to kill anyone to get what he wants.

As we cross into the final section of the novel, the entire things explodes into chaos as we learn who was responsible for everything and why. I don’t want to spoil this ending for anyone that hasn’t read the book yet since a good 65% of the novel builds to this final reveal and Jackson doesn’t disappoint. If you’ve read the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series especially the last book then you have some idea what you have in store for you as there are twists upon twists in the final 50 pages. Seeing how everything came together, who the person that died was and what happened after the events of this night are over were amazing. This has cemented Holly Jackson as an insta-buy author for me and it doesn’t matter what this woman write I will read and most likely love it. If you haven’t read Five Survive yet, then I’d highly recommend picking it up now for a thrilling ride that you will devour in a single sitting.

Buy it here:

Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com

Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com