Book/Story: ⭐️⭐️
Book Cover: ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️

Trigger Warning(s): Murder
Loss of family member
Stalking (loosely tied in)
Drug Use
Mental health
POV: Singular, First Person
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Trope(s): None
Spice: None
Genre: Young Adult, Thriller, Mystery
Debut Novel: No
Slow or Fast Burn: Slow
Safe or Dark: Safe
Release Date: October 6, 2020 ️

“See? I think it’s serendipity. Five total strangers connected over Christmas. For all we know this could be the start of some brilliant, lifelong friendship.”

This book should be titled Five Total Morons.

My brain is way too jumbled after reading this book to write a thorough review. Since this was an absolute dumpster fire. So, I’m falling back on my trusty list again. 



Pros:

1) The writing is easy to follow. It does read quick (despite the story moving horribly slowly). The chapters are a reasonable length. Natalie Richardson does a pretty good job there.

2) I really like the cover. It’s very eye-catching and gives you an idea of what the setting of the story promises to be. 

3) I’m not sure if the characters are supposed to be intentionally unlikeable, but if they are, it worked.   

4) The story ends where it should have, and the torture isn’t drawn out for too terribly long. We get to the finish line at exactly the right time.

5) This is a young adult thriller that can be enjoyed by all age groups. It does go a bit beyond the sort of books you would usually find categorized as YA.

6) The story taking place in a car was a nice twist on the closed room trope. It was a bit different than the normal “I’m trapped somewhere and have no way out” plot. I appreciated that. 

7) It has low-budget, B-list, horror film vibes, and I do love those. The cult classic purposely shitty movies are some of the favorites. 

Slotherhouse and Carved are two great ones. You can find them both on Hulu. Oh man, we can’t forget one of the OG’s Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which you can find on Amazon Prime. But anyway, I digress. 



8) The blizzard setting was a relatively scary one. It plays on a lot of people’s fears of getting stranded in the middle of a horrible storm. Especially in a car full of people you don’t know and are off-putting in one way or another. A lot of people worry about severe weather. If you want to be creeped out and have an irritational fear of being stuck in a blizzard, this book might be for you.

9) Richards built a great atmosphere. The icy roads and snow. The chill in the air. She gave good details in that regard.

Cons: 

1) If you’re looking for a fast-paced, page-turning read, you should look elsewhere. This is slow, almost painfully so. You really have to force yourself to push through most of this. It feels like nothing but nonsensical crap happened for the first 75% of the book.   

2) If you want a believable storyline, you should also be looking elsewhere. Too many unrealistic things happened to make this plot flow. Too many things lined up. Too many coincidences were had. You really need to suspend belief for this one. I know with books you have to do that sometimes. After all, people usually read to escape reality. But this was just way too much and over the top. It’s as if there is no crumb of reality in this book. So much had to fall into place to bring this group together.

3) If you want smart characters, you guessed it, look elsewhere. These teenagers/young adults made some very stupid decisions. Especially our main character. I know 18-year-olds tend to make split second decisions and are most times naive (despite thinking they know everything), but Mira takes the cake. She trusted someone she had a very superficial conversation with on a flight that lasted a few hours. Girly, why would you agree to a six-hour car ride in the middle of a snowstorm with FOUR PEOPLE YOU JUST MET on Christmas Eve? All to get home to your mom and best friend?

Spoiler

WHO DIDN’T EVEN TELL YOU THAT SHE WAS GETTING A DIVORCE!

. Your bestie is horribly selfish, by the way. God forbid you miss her concert. She doesn't care about you, Mira! I know this is a hard time for Mama, but it’s not your job to put your life at risk to be there for her. Your safety is more important than disappointing people. Seriously, Mira had a perfectly logical and out of her control reason for not being able to make it home for Christmas. Her mom and Zari should have understood that. Mira felt like she had no choice but to make that road trip, but she definitely had a choice. MIRA YOU 100% HAD A CHOICE! 

4) If you want solid side plots, for the fourth time, look elsewhere. We get a lose stalker storyline mixed in with this crap. I’m sure the reveal of who exactly is stalking Mira was supposed to be a *gasp* BIG REVEAL! However, the signs all point to who the culprit is rather early on. It’s obvious who Mira’s secret admirer is throughout the book. So, sadly, the shocking plot twist fell so flat.   

5) If you want a story where you can find a character to root for, come on, at this point do I even need to say it?, look elsewhere. There isn’t a single person in the book that I wanted to see come out on top. This group did nothing but bicker and argue the entire car ride. I didn’t want any of them to get where they needed to go. I wanted each and every one of their plans to get ruined. I didn’t even care if Mira made it home for Christmas. She could have been trapped in that car forever, and I wouldn’t have given a flying monkey ass.  

Mira – Thinks she is more mature than she actually is. Comes off as a bit pretentious. Makes rash decisions and is insanely naive with the ways of the world. She’s very artsy-fartsy.  
Harper – At face value, she seems too good to be true. Maybe she is. There’s nice, and then there’s Harper Chung nice.  
Brecken – He seems to have a bit of a short fuse while hiding behind a nice guy act.  
Josh – Something is very off about him. He’s a bit socially awkward and seems to get easily agitated.  
Kayla – Sleeps for a large majority of the trip. Does the bare minimum to help out the group in troubling situations.

6) If you want a story with an unpredictable ending for the umpteenth time, you need to look elsewhere. The ending was a huge letdown. You could see it coming from ten miles away. It was very typical for the thriller genre. It was also very rushed and sloppy. It left a lot to be desired.

7) If you want a plot that makes sense for the last time, look elsewhere. NOTHING IN THIS BOOK MADE SENSE! YOU CAN’T MAKE IT MAKE SENSE! As mentioned above in my too many coincidences occurred note point.



8) If you are looking for a book where the characters have strong/meaningful relationships, well, I’m not even going to say it. None of these characters had any relationships in their lives that I gave one single crap about. I didn’t even enjoy the relationship Mira had with her mom. It was so one-dimensional and flat. Isn’t that the relationship that’s supposed to drive the plot? Well, it was lackluster at best. In fact, her relationship with all her parents (mom, dad, stepdad) was so bland. Her relationship with her best friend was even worse. There was no substance to any of them. The only relationship worth anything was the one Mira had with her late Aunt Phoebe, and that says a lot because there wasn’t even that much going on with that one.

9) If you want a book where too many horrible things happen on one trip, you’re actually in the right place this time! For a six-hour road trip, so many awful things occur. Too many things. I get that traveling in the middle of a blizzard can be dangerous, but COME ON! If these five people didn’t have bad luck, they’d have no luck at all. It was just too much. I wish Richards stuck with two solid bad things happening and worked the plot around that instead of trying to toss a whole bunch of little things in the mix.

Spoiler

Sidenote: The bar scene was laughable. The fact that the owners were just like, “We understand that you need help. But it’s Christmas Eve, so we need to close and be with our families right this very moment. Best of luck. LOL! ”

10) If you like books where things that are foreshadowed never come to fruition, Ding! Ding! Ding! You’re in the right place! All the chapters end on a cliffhanger to make you want to keep reading, but at the beginning of the next chapter, NOTHING HAPPENS! It’s a setup that always leads to a huge letdown. A cheap trick to hook the reader, if you ask me.   



11) If you love characters that lack development, look no further! There was zero character development throughout the entire story. They were as flat as cardboard and developed into nothing more. How my workday progressed from start to finish had more development than these people. They were all so flat from start to finish.

12) If you enjoy books that discuss recreational drug use very poorly, this is the one for you. The portrayal of a character’s drug use throughout this story is so cringy. It was also a very stereotypical use of this topic. The way a struggling drug addict is described in his book is also pretty horrible, if you ask me. 

13)
If you want a book that seems like it’s set in 1995 when it’s actually supposed to be 2020, this is right up your alley. The fact that a group of college students and a teenager were traveling with minimal electronics and charging cords was crazy. Only one of them brought along a laptop for the trip, and zero of them had an iPad, tablet, or anything else comparable to a cell phone. It also took them way too long to realize that the above-mentioned laptop could be used to charge a dead or dying cell phone. It was not realistic at all with the generational times. How they could all be as dumb as bricks and so ill prepared when it came to technology is beyond me. 



This book earned two stars from me simply because I was able to finish it, the premise was a good one, and the idea and possible bones of the plot were there. Actually, this was a great premise that was executed poorly.

At the end of the day, I should have thrown in the towel on this one. But I’m at a point in my life where I enjoy a good hate read. Unmemorable characters and a very forgettable book.

TLDR: THE BAD ASPECTS OF THE BOOK OUTWEIGH THE GOOD! I WOULDN’T BOTHER WITH THIS ONE!

As always, please remember that reading is subjective, and that’s what makes it so great.