I enjoyed this book a lot, even though it was quite unrealistic and hastily written at times. Definitely a quick and easy popcorn thriller that I finished within a day.

Even though there is a pretty large cast of characters with 10 contestants on the reality TV show, the author did a good job distinguishing them all so I was never confused. This is helped by the fact that the book is written from only one perspective, Lyla. There are also diary entries from another contestant, Zana, every few chapters to add a different take on the events that occur.

The weakest parts of this book were the prologue and the ending while the rest of the book was really good at setting up the finale, building conflicts, and slowly revealing information.

The prologue feels out of place and really ruins a lot of the suspense because it basically reveals how the final showdown with the main antagonist occurs. So when the characters devise a scheme later in the novel, the reader already knows that it’s not going to work.

The ending of this book was quite strange and left a lot of unanswered questions. The main one is why they were suddenly able to

make contact with a boat through the radio after all their previous attempts went unanswered. It felt so convenient that right when they had wrapped everything up on the island and were close to running out of food, they got one last shot at calling for help and it worked.

Another half-baked aspect of the novel is the cameras that were set up to record everything for the reality TV show and keep recording after the storm strands them on the island. For some reason, these cameras are the main drivers for a lot of the tension/drama in the final act of the story. It’s explicitly stated that there’s no wifi connection on the island so the video recordings would either be uploaded to a central drive (and thus not an issue since all the equipment except a single radio was destroyed in the storm) or stored on the cameras themselves. But the survivors inexplicably decide that it would be too suspicious for them to take down all the cameras so they have to let them keep recording everything. What?! I think it would actually be extremely reasonable for them to take down all the cameras after they’re stranded in a storm. 

Even if we accept the whole camera thing, it’s still really baffling why all the remaining survivors were so convinced that they were going to be

prosecuted for the murder of the main antagonist after they were rescued from the island. They insist that they would never be believed if they claimed self-defense but the explanation/solution that they come up with is even sillier.

But overall, I thought the characters were compelling and I enjoyed the survivor/Lord of the Flies aspect of the book. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.