A review by anjh
Five Survive by Holly Jackson

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

oh my god. wow. how do i put all my thoughts about this book into one review. the amount of times i was holding my breath or about to beat up oliver (fuck oliver) through the page or getting literal shivers down my spine. this thriller was THRILLING let me tell you, holly jackson has some way of keeping you guessing and keeping you on the edge of your seat wondering “then who is it?? what?? how??” and suddenly a few pages down the track everything makes sense and slots into place and you beat yourself up for not realising sooner how holly tricked you and played with your mind through her writing, to make you believe and empathise with characters that were actually plotting violence and silently hating characters that were completely innocent. there were a few points in this book - particularly towards the start - where i almost felt like the writing style was similar to that of a poorly written wattpad fanfiction just because of the way holly has chosen to repeat seemingly useless details over and over and over again and i was thinking “why on earth is this relevant??” but thinking about it in more detail and reading online analyses of this book it makes sense that red is so detail focused and obsessive likely as a result of trauma. 
i love red so much and can relate to her a lot and i hate oliver. i really hate oliver. fuck oliver. oliver sucks. the light blue tabs are “fuck oliver” tabs. oh and the letter at the end oh my god holly jackson will be paying for my therapy after this. ***PLS CHECK THE CONTENT WARNINGS IF UR THINKING OF READING!!***
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