April 10

Hide – Kiersten White

The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.

The prize: enough money to change everything.

Even though everyone is desperate to win – to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts – Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.

It’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.

But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.

Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

 

I recieved a review copy through Netgalley

 

Hide was a great wee read which appealed to the horror fan within me. It centres on Mack, survivor of an extremely traumatic incident has a young child and now firmly of no fixed abode. She survives day to day in a shelter where she has a bed, gets fed and then will be turned out into the streets to fend for herself each day until the shelter opens again and she returns for another night’s sleep.  By day Mack hides away in a secret spot where she will be off the streets and out of danger.

At the shelter on the day we join the story Mack is presented with an opportunity to turn her ability to vanish into a money making opportunity. A reality game show – spend a week hiding in a 7 day game of hide and seek against 13 other competitors with a $50k prize to the winner. She really can’t refuse and finds herself pulled along by events and on a long journey heading towards the park where the competition will take place.

The action takes place within an abandoned amusement park. It’s a wild and long-forgotten site where the paths inside twist and turn. The foliage within has taken over and the rides are sprinkled within the mazelike paths which no planner was able to carefully map out for the guests who once attended to enjoy the attractions. The quirk of the amusement park back in the day was that guests would stumble upon the rides, there was no direct lines of sight from one area to the next and only one day per year were the gates flung open for all the local to enjoy the thrills within. Now it will host a competitive game of hide and seek.

Kiersten White introduces the contestants and any viewer of reality TV shows will recognise the quirky characters, the wise heads, the glamour ones and we will pick our favourites. Amusingly the contestants know how these games work too and we see them judging and assessing the competition and even picking out possible romantic partners.

Into the tournament and things start to take a dark turn. Who are the seekers? Are they using animals to assist their hunt? Why is this park so difficult to navigate? Is that blood?

As their numbers start to dwindle (two players eliminated each day) it becomes clear to Mack and her fellow contestants that something is very wrong with the game they are playing but will it be too late for them to raise alarm? You cannot help but be drawn into the thrill and tension of this story and there is much more going on with this game of hide and seek than you will anticpate.

I had a lot of fun with Hide. Some small frustrations, not least the author’s decision to get a bit poetic with language when something unpleasant is happening on the page. I had to re-read one or two passages to try to work out exactly what had happened. But the niggles were far outweighed by the enjoyment at an unexpected series of twists and turns. After a run of so-so reads this shook things up nicely.

 

Hide is published on 24 May and will be available in Hardback, Digital and Audiobook format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09FDYPNK9/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

 

 

 

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March 15

Last Ones Left Alive – Sarah Davis-Goff

Watch your six. Beware tall buildings. Always have your knives.

Raised by her mother and Maeve on Slanbeg, an island off the west coast of Ireland, Orpen has a childhood of love and stories by the fireside. But the stories grow darker, and the training begins. Ireland has been devoured by a ravening menace known as the skrake, and though Slanbeg is safe for now, the women must always be ready to run, or to fight.

When Maeve is bitten, Orpen is faced with a dilemma: kill Maeve before her transformation is complete, or try to get help. So Orpen sets off, with Maeve in a wheelbarrow and her dog at her side, in the hope of finding other survivors, and a cure. It is a journey that will test Orpen to her limits, on which she will learn who she really is, who she really loves, and how to imagine a future in a world that ended before she was born.

 

I received a review copy from the publishers and was invited to join the blog tour by Anne Cater at Random Things.  My thanks to both.

 

Last Ones Left Alive opens with Orpen, alone, isolated and vulnerable.  She is carefully making her way towards Phoenix City but it is not immediately clear why.  Orpen is traveling with her dog (Danger) and in a barrow she is pushing her sister Maeve.  If you read the blurb of the book, as above, then you will know that Maeve has been bitten – infected with a disease which will lead to her “turning”.   However, when you read the book this is not made clear from the outset and you need to follow Orpen’s journey before you can begin to piece together how she has reached this point.

Orpen is in Ireland. She has grown up on an island off the mainland where she has been sheltered from the events which seem to have changed our world forever.  People have died; many have been bitten by the infected denizens and when they get bitten they change into one of the infected too. It is dangerous to be out in the open and Orpen has trained since her 7th birthday to know how to fight and defend herself.

Watch your six. Beware tall buildings. Always have your knives.

Orpen’s story is told in two time periods – the present day and her constant plight and then the story flips to her childhood and we see Orpen living with her mother and sister (who in present day is in a barrow being pushed along by Orpen as she resists the “change”).  It builds a comprehensive overview of the characters and gives real depth to the situation they find themselves in.

Encounters on her journey will define Orpen’s story and although I found this book to be a slow burn which rewarded readers with a gradual build-up of the overall picture, it is a fascinating read.

Dystopian dramas bring a terrifying landscape to life – Sarah Davis-Goff gives us a tense tale in which survival is everything, self preservation crucial and forming attachments ill-advised.

 

Last Ones Left Alive is published by Tinder Press and is available in hardback, digital and audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Ones-Alive-Sarah-Davis-Goff/dp/1472255208/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=last+ones+left+alive&qid=1552598760&s=gateway&sr=8-1

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September 7

The Last One – Alexandra Oliva

the-last-oneTWELVE CONTESTANTS

When Zoo agrees to take part in a new reality TV show, In the Dark, she knows that she will be tested to the limits of her endurance. Beating eleven competitors in a series of survival tasks deep in the forest, living on camera at the extremes of her comfort zone, will be the ultimate challenge before she returns home to start a family.

A GAME WITH NO END

As the contestants are overcome by hunger, injury and psychological breakdown, the mind games, tricks and hazards to which Zoo is subjected grow dark beyond belief. This isn’t what she signed up for: the deserted towns and gruesome props, the empty loneliness. Is this a game with no end? And what is happening away from the cameras’ gaze? Discovering the truth will be just the beginning…

 

I received my review copy from the publishers, Michael Joseph, through Netgalley

Imagine a reality tv show where the show and reality blur to the point that a contestant does not know where the show ends and the real world begins. That is The Last One – a game show overlaps with a national disaster and Zoo (our heroine) does not know that the world will never be the same again.

The Last One is cleverly written with narrative jumping from “present day Zoo”, struggling to survive on her own in a remote wilderness to win the prize in a survival game show. Then we are switched to “Zoo first joining the show”, finding her feet through the early challenges, sussing out the other competitors and learning the skills which she will need when the programme send her into the wilderness on her own.

Each of the contestants are defined by their jobs – Zoo, Waitress, Doctor. I really enjoyed the sections of the book where the competition was played out. Alexandra Oliva brilliantly describes the scene, plays out the challenges, shows the character interaction then as an aside includes a paragraph to show how the producers will twist an incident, manipulate the viewing public and give some extra “drama”.  It really emphasised the game show scenes so even when Zoo is learning how to light a fire there is entertainment foremost in the chapter.

But away from the game there is a very serious real life drama unfolding. Early in the story the reader is made aware that something is very wrong. References are made to members of the production team who will not see how a challenge finishes.  A scene is recorded but will never be aired.  People are dying yet Zoo is oblivious, she is playing the game and she is going to follow the rules and she is going to win! No matter what OTT challenges the production team are throwing at her.

The Last One is a tense thriller which takes the familiarity of a game show and asks “what if everything went wrong”.  A really enjoyable read with just the right amount of nasty to keep everything unpredictable.

 

The Last One is available now in Hardback and digital format and you can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-One-Alexandra-Oliva/dp/0718182502/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472897836&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+one

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