Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.0 AVERAGE
3.0 AVERAGE
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I sometimes have a hard time reviewing YA books because I’m very obviously not the target audience and I realize that I have to take that into consideration. But I also feel very strongly that YA readers should be taken more seriously and that we don’t have to shrug stuff off and say “well, it is for younger readers.”
The stuff I liked: I thought it was decently atmospheric. In the beginning, I found myself a little bored but in the sense that I was stuck in the woods with Neena and Josie, listening to them chatter. It felt hot and sticky and uncomfortable. I actually love hiking but being in their shoes (ha) I could very much sense that they weren’t exactly the biggest fans. But I understood their want and need to do something like this. One last big adventure before their separation.
I thought that their friendship was pretty well established. It wasn’t over the top mushy or cringy. It was realistic. They clearly cared very much about each other, enjoyed each other’s company, had a lot of good memories together, but there was always an underlying tension. I thought that the tension was built up well over time as they went from genuinely having fun, struggling a little bit, and then becoming fully lost and helpless. I thought their emotions were well balanced.
The stuff I didn’t like: the villains were incredibly underdeveloped. Scary and disturbing, and unfortunately realistic, but just not much meat to them. They’re just there in the woods killing wildly. And then there was the awkward last throw in of abusive, overly religious parents that spanned a few paragraphs. They just didn’t work.
This is where I feel a little mean, but I also think Josie breaking her foot, no, SHATTERING her foot, and then literally getting her hand blown off, and dong everything she did was unrealistic. YES, there’s such a thing as adrenaline and YES I want a strong bad ass female lead, and actually YES I do believe that this might be possible. There’s so many incredible stories of people surviving extraordinary events. But it just went off the rails. Every time she did something I found myself feeling frustrated rather than overwhelmed. And then she and concussed, asthmatic Neena (who, I’m so sorry, took a backseat to Josie in the strong female lead department, like she did stuff but I also just hated how uneven they were) made it all the way back to the car unaided??
The ending was also frustratingly abrupt and I truly disliked it. Overall I just wish that this book wasn’t so over the top and dramatic. It could have been exciting and tense and scary and full of female friendship and feminine power, but it could have also just been a tad bit more realistic.
The stuff I liked: I thought it was decently atmospheric. In the beginning, I found myself a little bored but in the sense that I was stuck in the woods with Neena and Josie, listening to them chatter. It felt hot and sticky and uncomfortable. I actually love hiking but being in their shoes (ha) I could very much sense that they weren’t exactly the biggest fans. But I understood their want and need to do something like this. One last big adventure before their separation.
I thought that their friendship was pretty well established. It wasn’t over the top mushy or cringy. It was realistic. They clearly cared very much about each other, enjoyed each other’s company, had a lot of good memories together, but there was always an underlying tension. I thought that the tension was built up well over time as they went from genuinely having fun, struggling a little bit, and then becoming fully lost and helpless. I thought their emotions were well balanced.
The stuff I didn’t like: the villains were incredibly underdeveloped. Scary and disturbing, and unfortunately realistic, but just not much meat to them. They’re just there in the woods killing wildly. And then there was the awkward last throw in of abusive, overly religious parents that spanned a few paragraphs. They just didn’t work.
This is where I feel a little mean, but I also think Josie breaking her foot, no, SHATTERING her foot, and then literally getting her hand blown off, and dong everything she did was unrealistic. YES, there’s such a thing as adrenaline and YES I want a strong bad ass female lead, and actually YES I do believe that this might be possible. There’s so many incredible stories of people surviving extraordinary events. But it just went off the rails. Every time she did something I found myself feeling frustrated rather than overwhelmed. And then she and concussed, asthmatic Neena (who, I’m so sorry, took a backseat to Josie in the strong female lead department, like she did stuff but I also just hated how uneven they were) made it all the way back to the car unaided??
The ending was also frustratingly abrupt and I truly disliked it. Overall I just wish that this book wasn’t so over the top and dramatic. It could have been exciting and tense and scary and full of female friendship and feminine power, but it could have also just been a tad bit more realistic.
I wanted this book to be so much more than it was. I was hoping for creepy, atmospheric, maybe something supernatural…instead I got the “murderous Appalachian hillbilly” trope which is not only tired, it’s incredibly classist and prejudiced. :( I am disappointed!
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I could not put this down.
adventurous
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
This is brutal and dark, yet a powerful metaphor or friendship and the horrors of the unknown future.
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Torture, Abandonment
I mulled on writing this review for a few days after completing my reading of the book. After reflecting on it, I changed my review from two stars to one star. There were several things that caused this decision. First, I truly do not believe that the character of Josie would have survived the ordeal. She was injured and almost incapacitated from the injury to her foot and leg, then survived having her hand blown off by a shotgun (with surprising accuracy and no other damage to her body). I'm not a medical expert, but I think that a person stuck in a hole with a foot that is almost completely ripped from their body and a stump from a gunshot wound would bleed out and die in the hole. I think that there is no way that she would have survived that.
The journey back from the campsite and hole at the end of the book is insanely fast, particularly when you consider that one character is slowly bleeding to death (despite her superhuman abilities it seems). The whole first part of the book talks about how the girls were taking forever to get to their campsite, but we are expected to forget that and believe that with the heinous wounds that Josie has, not only does she pick herself up, climb out of the hole, walk through the woods, and make it to safety after being attacked AGAIN? It's completely unrealistic.
The third issue I had was the psychic connection that the girls had with their assailants. It came out of nowhere and was very jarring. One of the men forcibly kisses one of the girls, and suddenly she sees his entire life story before her eyes. All of his pain and suffering. A similar experience happens between the other victim and assailant.
Also, the fact that Josie survived it all AND was able to drive them away from the forest is just too far gone for me to believe.
I don't know why the author seemed to dislike Josie so much. It was apparent that after her father died, she was neglected by her own mother and was terrified of being abandoned by her best friend because Neena was moving to Los Angeles. The author chose to brutally maim Josie, reaping all of the horrible things that occur in the book onto her. Neena, on the other hand, has asthma. I can see that after this book, Neena will still go off to LA, leaving Josie and that trauma behind. The entire premise of the book is that they are best friends who are about to lose each other. IMO, Neena's character has nothing to lose now by abandoning Josie after this trauma. Josie will be abandoned, left without a foot and a hand, while the exact thing that she feared will happen. But we don't get that resolution. The author basically screws Josie over, reaping pain after pain on her about her father, her mother, her former best friend, her brother and his girlfriend, her best friend leaving her, not going off to college, and THEN ups the ante by having her lose a foot and an arm??
Edit: I had to come back and finish this review because I forgot about the most outrageous part of the story. For no reason, and with perfect timing, a BEAR saves the girls? Despite the fact that bear attacks are extremely rare ("The ATC claims nearly 3 million visited the [Appalachian] trail this year, this means that nearly 1 in a 24-30million chance you will be involved in a fatal bear attack"), a bear happens to come along and attack the two men and kill them despite the fact that a small, blood-soaked Josie was sitting right there for the taking. The girls assume it was because one of the men urinated, but surely, the bear would have smelled Josie's blood over urine. Not a bear expert, but a random attack on two grown men by a single bear makes no sense with the situation described.
The journey back from the campsite and hole at the end of the book is insanely fast, particularly when you consider that one character is slowly bleeding to death (despite her superhuman abilities it seems). The whole first part of the book talks about how the girls were taking forever to get to their campsite, but we are expected to forget that and believe that with the heinous wounds that Josie has, not only does she pick herself up, climb out of the hole, walk through the woods, and make it to safety after being attacked AGAIN? It's completely unrealistic.
The third issue I had was the psychic connection that the girls had with their assailants. It came out of nowhere and was very jarring. One of the men forcibly kisses one of the girls, and suddenly she sees his entire life story before her eyes. All of his pain and suffering. A similar experience happens between the other victim and assailant.
Also, the fact that Josie survived it all AND was able to drive them away from the forest is just too far gone for me to believe.
I don't know why the author seemed to dislike Josie so much. It was apparent that after her father died, she was neglected by her own mother and was terrified of being abandoned by her best friend because Neena was moving to Los Angeles. The author chose to brutally maim Josie, reaping all of the horrible things that occur in the book onto her. Neena, on the other hand, has asthma. I can see that after this book, Neena will still go off to LA, leaving Josie and that trauma behind. The entire premise of the book is that they are best friends who are about to lose each other. IMO, Neena's character has nothing to lose now by abandoning Josie after this trauma. Josie will be abandoned, left without a foot and a hand, while the exact thing that she feared will happen. But we don't get that resolution. The author basically screws Josie over, reaping pain after pain on her about her father, her mother, her former best friend, her brother and his girlfriend, her best friend leaving her, not going off to college, and THEN ups the ante by having her lose a foot and an arm??
Edit: I had to come back and finish this review because I forgot about the most outrageous part of the story. For no reason, and with perfect timing, a BEAR saves the girls? Despite the fact that bear attacks are extremely rare ("The ATC claims nearly 3 million visited the [Appalachian] trail this year, this means that nearly 1 in a 24-30million chance you will be involved in a fatal bear attack"), a bear happens to come along and attack the two men and kill them despite the fact that a small, blood-soaked Josie was sitting right there for the taking. The girls assume it was because one of the men urinated, but surely, the bear would have smelled Josie's blood over urine. Not a bear expert, but a random attack on two grown men by a single bear makes no sense with the situation described.
