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Wow, so very bored. I just don't care.

by far one of the poorly written things i have read. i do not understand why it is written in third person omniscience. that can be done, but it is very difficult, especially for a novel as short as this one. it is completely mismarketed and miscategorized. this is not a horror novel. it is more of a thriller, but even then, the pacing is very difficult to get through. there are sign posts for the twist that are too obvious and massive exposition dumps of lore done multiple times. i have no doubt that this author can write. but i expect a novel of this quality from a person starting off writing, not someone who is a published professional. i blame the editors and marketing for this. clearly, their gauges were off.

Jolly good fun, interesting enough to keep reading - not so interesting you can't put it down. The romance angle was unnecessary especially given that the author clearly understands that social bonds can be powerful and meaningful without a romantic tilt. That said it's not egregious and is more of a footnote in the story than a main theme, so it's manageable. Sort of cabin in the woods meets reality competition.

You know that there is something hunting the contestants, but you're not quite sure. I was pretty sure it wasn't human, but that's pretty much all I knew. I spent the rest of the book surprised at every choice Mack makes until the final moment. Fantastic.

3.5 rounded up.

There were some issues I had with the writing style. I wish we didn't have two characters named Ava. It did get confusing at times. I was hoping it would have a plot point but it didn't. Overall, enjoyed the story and characters. Good typical horror plot. Predictable, but nothing wrong with that! Felt like watching a good 90's or 2000's horror flick.

my biggest issue with this book was the POV's—i kept getting confused because the POV switches weren't very distinct

i've wanted to read this one for a while but it wasn't what i thought it was gonna be..but to be fair i don't even know what i was expecting

brandon deserves the world btw

Really liked the start but the ending was so rushed and made like no sense

Ehhh. What started as a brilliant concept, quickly devolved into a boring, sloppy mess. I was hoping for another FANTASTICLAND. Unfortunately this was a huge letdown. Avoid this one.

Many of the reviews are negative because they say this book was too “woke” or was pushing an agenda. This is not why I gave it only two, maybe two and a half, stars. I gave it that rating because it is dreadfully dull.

I wanted this book since DelRey first posted the cover reveal. I thought it looked so cool and the premise was promising. This was my pick in a bookstagram giveaway! 

This is a fourteen person, seven day hide-and-seek competition. Two people can get out a day and there is only one single winner. With $50,000 on the line, even with the game running from sunup to sundown daily, who wouldn't be enticed into playing? Of course nothing is as it seems, there's the horror. 

At only 240 pages, this is a rather short one. Yet it still felt like kind of a slog to me. The story takes a strange amount of time to get going, the characters' backgrounds play so heavily into the story and yet most of them are pointless or even unbelievable. The exposition takes away almost all of the creepiness...and let me tell you, this could have been a really creepy story. 

The last section of the book though I really did enjoy (although even that felt like it went on for a little too long) which saved it. Once the truth is out the novel kind of goes balls-to-the-walls for the last 40 or so pages. Still in no way creepy or scary, but at the least I was entertained and interested to see what happened. 

Kind of into it, but I didn't love it.

Feels like the author just wanted to do a mash up of the FNAF inspired movie with Nicholas Cage & the reboot of the Goosebumps witch movies on Netflix. I sometimes really dislike authors already prevalent in the industry because who tf else would been able to get this published?

author makes a note about making this novel her glory against bigots/racism with putting absolutely zero effort in accomplishing this. She probably just thought it was the new fun thing to do according to Twitter. The novel has that, yeah, but the lack of writing skills makes it read less with the purpose of combating against racism, and more like the author wanted the world to know she's on some woke shit.

If I could pay to get my time back from reading this, I'd happily go broke to do so.

The first half of this book was good, but not good enough to make up for the incredibly lengthy journal entries that plagued the second half. Most of the story was just repeating the same ideas over and over again. The idea was great, it just would've been more suited as a short story.

Rating: 4.06 leaves out of 5Characters: 4/5 Cover: 3.5/5Story: 3.75/5Writing: 5/5Genre: Horror/Mystery/ParanormalType: AudiobookWorth?: YesHated Disliked It Was Okay Liked Loved FavoritedHide had me feeling some kind of way. I liked the story, the characters were enjoyable, and the plot had me wanting to know more. There was something that made me go, “huh?” 1. What exactly the link to the family was? I was a bit confused about it. They all were blood related some way? Another thing that had me eh-ing was the fact that the monster wasn't detailed enough. Lastly the ending kind of fell... flat a bit. I wanted more and got less.

I was excited to read this. I'm not a big fan of “horror” but the concept sounded good. This book is full of just awful, unlikable characters. I didn't like how the POV of the story would change after every paragraph. I don't mind different POVs if they are transitioned and separated by chapters...not paragraphs in the same chapter. It ruins the flow of the book, in my opinion. Unfortunately, this was a miss for me.

The beginning was great but the last 1/4 was not as good. Maybe I'd like it better on a second read. The beginning felt like a mix of hunger games and knives out. I love Greek mythology but I wish that the monster was a human/serial killer instead of a Minotaur. I also wish the theme park aspect was a little better. That's what I was most excited for!  

2 stars ⭐️⭐️
Higgggghly disappointed in this. First, this read super YA for an adult book. Then there were WAY too many characters to keep up with - the story was way too short to give you enough backstory to really care about any of the characters. There was a love story that was formed out of nothing as the characters barely communicated with each other and honestly, I had no idea what was going on. It just went in a completely different direction that I wasn't expecting and not in a good way. I understand the commentary the author was trying to portray but there was so many different things going on, it all kind of fell through.
Stick to Bird Box.

wavered between 4 and 5 stars until the last line, which gutted me.

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It's really interesting seeing how divisive this book was, because I just loved it. In retrospect, it's probably more like 4.5 stars, it definitely wasn't perfect. I do see where some of the criticisms come from but they truly weren't things that bothered me. I was drawn so wholly into this that I just didn't want to put it down. I will agree that I did struggle a bit with the large cast but that did quickly become a nonissue. This would probably make a great film so I'm hoping we get an adaptation at least.

I enjoyed this fast paced energetic read so so much!! White is capable of creating such depth in her story and scenery while maintaining and expanding the empathy you feel for the characters. It was a crazy ride. I'm def gonna check out more of her books.

3.5 stars