I really enjoyed the Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy, so of course I was eager to try the new thriller by Holly Jackson. Here’s my Review of Five Survive, a thrilling locked room YA mystery.
Five Survive by Holly Jackson
To be published on November 29, 2022 by Delacorte Press
Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for review.
What Else has Holly Jackson Written? Holly Jackson books in order.
Well, I am very glad you asked, because I have just spent a ton of time writing up both a Spoiler-Free Series Review of The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy AND a Spoiler Discussion for the Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series.
Holly’s books thus are are:
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019)
Good Girl, Bad Blood (2020)
As Good as Dead (2022)
Kill Joy, a GGGTM novella (2021)
The first book will be made into a TV series (yay!) which I am super-excited about.
You can find out more about Holly Jackson on her publisher’s website. She does not seem to have an author website, but she is on Instagram.
Review of Five Survive by Holly Jackson
Considering my recent deep dive into Holly Jackson’s YA trilogy, I have many thoughts about this book vs. those books.
If you liked A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder will you like Five Survive?
If you thought A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder went WAY too dark, will you like Five Survive better? I’m here to help!
It was interesting to me that Five Survive seemed almost the exact opposite of A Good Girl’s Guide. And I love an author who mixes things up!
The A Good Girl’s Guide trilogy is a long story with a lot of character development. It’s a look at one girl’s experience with the criminal justice system, its fairness, and how much one person can change the course of a case, both in terms of the outcome and the public perception.
How is Five Survive Different from Good Girls Guide?
Five Survive is a standalone, a locked room mystery, and a fast-paced thrill ride that can’t possibly have the character development of a trilogy.
It’s a single POV book, which means that we get to know our narrator, Redford “Red” Kenny, better than any of the other characters. I feel like maybe the book could have worked well as a multi-POV book, like another popular locked room YA mystery, One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus.
The suspense in Five Survive was very high and really well done. This group of kids is setting off on a Spring Break trip in an RV. Before they know it, they’re stranded on a dirt road in the middle of the night with no cell service, four flat tires, and some kind of crazy sniper shooting at them.
Do you read thrillers or true crime and think “what would I have done in this situation?” I thought the group’s ingenuity when facing this very harrowing situation was extremely well-done.
The book did (for me) make it pretty easy to guess two main aspects of the mystery.
What I didn’t like as well was the ending. I didn’t mind the ending itself, but I felt that there was a lot of information dumped on the reader in the last quarter of the book, information that the narrative didn’t give the reader time to process.
Instead of steadily giving us puzzle pieces, the book gave us a few and then dumped half the box on the table right at the end of the book.
Overall, I did really enjoy Five Survive. It didn’t (and couldn’t) have the depth of character development and plotting as a three-book trilogy, but it makes a really fun standalone read.