*SPOILERS BELOW*
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.
Mack was definitely an interesting character. She has been through so much in her life you really can’t help but sympathize with her and want her to make it through the competition. We aren’t really given much about her age or appearance I feel and even though we are see things through her perspective the most I didn’t feel as connected to her as what I possibly could have.
All of the other characters took a while for me to get situated with. I think the introduction to the majority of them was a little rushed and they weren’t very distinguishable until after most of them were already dead. I think the two Ava’s were at the forefront because Mack met them first and they have the same name which I thought was an interesting choice for the author to make. Braden was a sweetheart, from the few chapters we get from his perspective he genuinely felt like such a empathetic, joyful person. Legrand I was intrigued by from the start and I didn’t think he would be as integral to the storyline than what he actually was.
I liked the way all of the characters were linked at the end. I had always thought their selection of competitors was very random but after finding out why each of them was there it made sense and was an unpredictable twist. I would of liked to find out more about the history of these families and what spurned the first 14 of them to forge this covenant. We get a pretty brief history through the journals but I found myself wanting to know more and I definitely have some questions that were left unanswered.
The supernatural element of the monster I found to be lacking. I appreciated how affected the characters were when they saw this creature but I was feeling underwhelmed by the descriptions of it. It just didn’t sound very scary so I couldn’t really take it seriously. The whole book revolves around this monster and how it’s been devouring generations of these people and it just didn’t seem alarming or terrifying enough.
⭐️3/5 stars It was an ok read.. a lot of unexpected twists!
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