Reviews with content warning for Bullying - Tell Me What Really Happened

<i>The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>
In this book, five friends (Maylee, the blogger, Nolan, the conspiracist, John, the popular, Petra, the controller, and Abigail, the girl-next-door) go to a weekend camp because Maylee had the idea. Something happens around midnight, and Maylee disappears, leaving the other four to look for her.
The whole book is about them telling the story to the police after they called to find his body.
I could resist getting the arc when I read about the story, and I didn't get disappointed with this choice.

The book is all narrated by the four characters telling their views of what happened and also about the person that is Maylee with everything that happened in the past and present revolves around her and her ideas.
It was an interesting idea and one that I would have liked to read more in style for having embarked on the pace of the mystery, or maybe it was the way the author wrote that made me like it so much.

Maylee is the only character that we don't have the pov but she is the main character because everything revolves around her and how everyone moves because of her actions.
Petra is a character with a difficult personality but who cares a lot about the people she cares about and is the one who gives us more information about Maylee and certain events of the night.
John is a good young man and I wondered why he was dating Maylee and how complicated everything is for him on the police force because of his past.
Petra's brother Nolan goes on the trip at the insistence of their parents and a conspiracist bigfoot conspiracy theories, and it was interesting to learn more about how this obsession started.
Abigal is a nice girl and at first, we don't understand what she's doing on the trip, and end up becoming very important to give more information about the event.

I recommend this read for the mystery experience, I won't consider it my favorite mystery of the year, but it came close.

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hollyk's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Holy cow. I read this in one day, so my thoughts are jumbled.

I love a good police interview transcript in a book. This book is ENTIRELY police transcripts. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I had no clue until the very end, and I was genuinely guessing and trying to piece things together. I guessed one or two little twists, but not any of the major ones.

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vj_thompson's review

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emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Five teenagers decide to go camping in the wood where girls are known to go missing; Salvation Creek. Four made it out. Maylee did not…It’s up to the four “friends” to figure out what happened to Maylee. All of them are hiding something but what? That is up to the reader, and the investigating detective, to figure out.

I love interview style books. Listening to the audio book version was also great. The voices match the age of the characters. I thought Petra’s voice actor was fitting for the character since she was supposed to be an analytical know-it-all. I would definitely recommend listening to the audio book version rather than reading this story. I tried reading at first but found it difficult and slow.

The thing is, I don’t know how I would rate this read. I also don’t know if I would recommend this to adult readers who like to read YA. I thought it was just ok. I’ve read better YA thrillers. Nolan’s character was VERY annoying and frustrating. There is always that one annoying character. I knew what had happened right as the author set up the Maylee’s disappearance. The author also had the characters make small observations but these were never answered.

One last frustrating thing was that the book didn’t get good until the 50% mark then again around 70%. It was slow pace until these points.

What I loved was John’s background about the “accident.” The author did a great job writing and depicting small town racism. It reminded me of what unfortunately happened in the small town I grew up in. The voice actor did a great job narrating this portion as well. I was very moved by how he spoke the words and felt every ounce of pain he spoke.

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daringreader13's review

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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lizanneyoung's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated

5.0

I received an eARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was initially interested in this book because of the unconventional style of being told through police interviews. I love books that don’t follow a “traditional” format typically, and this sounded like a fun spin on the chapter-based narrative.

Tell Me What Really Happened was stunning. Each chapter is designed as an answer to an interrogation question, which was a nice touch. There are pauses noted as if the police are asking follow-up questions or providing additional information, but those questions or details aren’t given to the reader, so you try to piece it together alongside what happened to Maylee, the missing teen.

The inclusion of cryptozoology made me smile. I have always been interested in cryptids, and it was interesting to see that woven into the narrative and used in the way it was.

What really made me rate this book five stars was how it made me feel. I usually read late at night while my husband is asleep, and I found I couldn’t do that with this book. I was spooking myself trying to read in the dark as the four teens describe their time in the woods overnight. I applaud Sedoti for doing that to me.

It also evoked how I felt watching two of my favorite horror movies: The Blair Witch Project and Oculus. Teens frantically wandering the woods trying to find the people they came with, strange noises, the feeling of eyes on you, and a strange cabin all gave me The Blair Witch Project vibes. I half-expected the book to end with someone in the corner of a room. In trying not to give spoilers, I will simply say that the ending of Tell Me What Really Happened reminded me of the ending to Oculus in terms of the confusion felt by a character and the impact their environment had on their decisions.

I would be lying if I wasn’t surprised by the intentions for the camping trip. What did surprise me was how calculated and well-planned it was from the character’s point of view. Their expectations were realistic, even if it disappoints me that it would definitely work in today’s world.

Tell Me What Really Happened is a wonderful take on the YA thriller that left me slightly spooked in the dark but desperate to know what happened next and how the story would come to an end.

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bookedandbusy's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was INTENSE. I loved it so much. I didn’t know what to think or who to trust, and there were so many twists and turns and it made my head spin.

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camiclarkbooks's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I received a digital ARC of “Tell Me What Really Happened” by Chelsea Sedoti through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Chelsea Sedoti’s “Tell Me What Really Happened” is a gripping YA mystery about a five teens who go on a last-minute camping trip. But only four leave the woods because just after midnight, one of them disappeared.

The remaining four are taken into police custody and are interrogated separately to find out exactly what happened the night before. As the hours tick by, the teens’ lies and truths are slowly revealed. But is it too late?

“Tell Me What Really Happened” is told entirely through the first-person police interviews of the four high schoolers that made it out of the woods. The characters are separated and are sharing their side of the incident during their interrogation. We don’t see the detectives that interview the characters and the only dialogue we hear from them are at the very beginning of each chapter. Other than that, it’s only what the teenagers reference in their interviews.

The first-person interview format gives the book an interesting hook. It also increases the stakes by allowing the reader to intimately see what the other characters are feeling about their missing friend. As the story progresses, the reader has a chance to solve the mystery as the characters share their memories of the night before.

Each of the five characters represents a specific high school stereotype—an academic overachiever, a conspiracy theorist, a social outcast, a control freak, and a wannabe social media influencer—and those stereotypes really drive the plot. The characters were fairly diverse, which is so important in YA books.

“Tell Me What Really Happened” is a solid YA mystery that relies on tried-and-true tropes presented in a very unique way. The first-person police interviews heighten the tension of the story. It won’t be long before the reader is biting their nails to figure out what really happened in Salvation Creek that fateful camping trip.

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beckyremillard's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Five teenagers are planning on a one-night camping trip at Salvation Creek. It’s not smooth sailing from the beginning, but gets worse when one of them goes missing. Everyone has their own theories about what happened and what they think needs to be done.

I wasn’t prepared for the story to be written in this format. It was different than anything I’ve read before. The prologue confused me but I got it once I was actually in chapter one.

The premise of the story is that the four teenagers are being questioned by police about the missing girl. We get the perspectives of all four, responding to a question posed by police, which is at the beginning of the chapter. Otherwise, there’s no dialogue from the police. There are a lot of context clues, but the only direct police comments are at the beginning of each chapter.

It’s a formatting you’ll like or hate. If you don’t like the way it’s written after the first couple chapters, you will probably feel that way throughout. But I thought it was a neat way of writing.

Regarding the actual plot, it was decent and fairly quick moving. I didn’t get bored throughout and I read it pretty fast. Don’t expect to like the characters, but they were written well to understand their background.

I guess there were kind of plot twists but they were anticlimactic with the reveal. It tied everything together and shows how one action can have a domino effect, but the reveal of Maylee’s death and how she died wasn’t shocking.

Thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for a chance to read and review this book!

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