It's always a good year when Megan Miranda releases a new novel and when I was able to score it in my April Book of the Month box.
The last two Megan Miranda books, Such a Quiet Place and The Last to Vanish weren't my favorite so I was hopeful that third time's a charm with The Only Survivors... and it was.
I sped through this book within a few days and the last 50% of it was gobbled up during one day. Once the plot started picking up, I simply could not put it down. I needed to know what happened and I was stunned silent.
Publisher's Summary
Seven hours in the past. Seven days in the present. Seven survivors remaining. Who would you save?
A decade ago, two vans filled with high school seniors on a school service trip crashed into a Tennessee ravine—a tragedy that claimed the lives of multiple classmates and teachers. The nine students who managed to escape the river that night were irrevocably changed. A year later, after one of the survivors dies by suicide on the anniversary of the crash, the rest of them make a pact: to come together each year to commemorate that terrible night.
To keep one another safe.
To hold one another accountable.
Or both.
Their annual meeting place, a house on the Outer Banks, has long been a refuge. But by the tenth anniversary, Cassidy Bent has worked to distance herself from the tragedy, and from the other survivors. She’s changed her mobile number. She’s blocked the others’ email addresses. This year, she is determined to finally break ties once and for all. But on the day of the reunion, she receives a text with an obituary attached: another survivor is gone. Now they are seven—and Cassidy finds herself hurling back toward the group, wild with grief—and suspicion.
Almost immediately, something feels off this year. Cassidy is the first to notice when Amaya, annual organizer, slips away, overwhelmed. This wouldn’t raise alarm except for the impending storm. Suddenly, they’re facing the threat of closed roads and surging waters…again. Then Amaya stops responding to her phone. After all they’ve been through, she wouldn’t willfully make them worry. Would she?
And—as they promised long ago—each survivor will do whatever he or she can do to save one another. Won’t they?
My Thoughts
The plot of this book sounded so intriguing and once I started reading it, I knew there was more to the story. It wasn't just that these people were in a tragic accident when they were younger, there was something more sinister beneath the surface that led to them coming together on the anniversary every year.
As you start reading, you get a clearer picture of what happened that night of the accident; there were more 'survivors' than the 10 people who made it out and lived to see the next days. However, as the years go on, more survivors die and it starts to feel like a targeted attack.
Cassidy Bent is our narrator and while you think she's trustworthy at first, as you read more and get deeper in the weeds you can see that maybe she's not all what she seems. When the book ends, you get the full picture and everything about Cassidy makes more sense.
There are a lot of twists and turns in this book, more than you would expect from what seems like a straightforward plot at first. Nothing is as it seems and you are constantly on the edge of your seat waiting for the other shoe to drop.
While reading, I was suspicious of everyone; who was telling the truth? Who was lying? Who was actually after them? No one seemed trustworthy and as the true characters are revealed, you won't know what hit you.
I can't say much more without revealing the ending but the slow start of The Only Survivors is well worth it to get to the crazy, intense, explosive and truly shocking ending.
xoxo
B
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