Hide

Hide by Kiersten White is rather okay when you consider that it is the author's’ debut ‘horror’ novel and that she only wrote fantasy novels for young adults before. 14 contestants have been invited to take part in a game of hide and seek in an abandoned amusement park. Their task is to make it 7 days without being found and the winner will get 50,000$. As the week goes on some of the contestants start to get suspicious that something more is going on and the truth is beyond any of their imaginations.   The synopsis and the general amusement park setting were so promising and had so much potential. However the characters were all quite uninteresting and the plot was equally predictable. The atmosphere was really good and the plot has an interesting backstory to it, so that was a lot to take in. However, I think my biggest issue was all the POV’s and that two characters were named Ava. The story was told in 15 different POV’s. At least that’s what I think, because at some point I couldn’t tell them apart and I just gave up bothering. Other than that, I thought it was kind of boring. It picks up in the last like 100 pages or so, but even then it wasn’t the most exciting read for me. Furthermore, there was no need for romance in this book. I mean, they are being eliminated one by one by an ominous creature. Not exactly the atmosphere for budding love. I wish horror writers would stop this nonsense.

For the fact that this is advertised as a high-stakes hide-and-seek game in an abandoned theme park, fairly little happens. What I liked the first few chapters was the ambiguity because we didn't know whether it was going to be supernatural or not, but that got resolved within 50 pages, and the rest of the book, therefore, was just dull. Even though it was revealed very early on what the "threat" in this book is, I feel like nothing was done with this information, and exactly NOTHING was explained to the reader. Yes, I get that the author wanted to coat some aspects of the story is a bit of mystery, but explaining nothing is too much mystery. Also: I could not get myself to root for the characters at all. Not that great a thriller.

2.5 stars Didn't dislike this as much as others did. The characters didn't annoy me that much and I appreciated the representation in the two main characters. Also I'm a sucker for characters with traumatic pasts for some reason so really enjoyed that part of their characters and the impact it had on their relationship. I guess that's weird in it's own way? I'm new to genres like horror and thriller so I didn't know what to expect. There is a paranormal/supernatural aspect to the story and I did not like that as an explanation which makes sense as I'm not a fantasy reader and don't like unrealistic stuff in any genre. If I had known that that was part of the book, I most likely wouldn't have read it. Also the whole backstory and explanation wasn't very interesting? The book talks about topics like class and race and while I liked this, there was a small part that didn't sit well with me. No spoilers, but it had to do with Ava's character and a reveal that happened near the end. The writing was fine in my opinion and not too slow for me. I kind of expected to be scared or disgusted or feel something because of the genre, but didn't? The prolog was written really well, shocked me and I had high expectations because of that. The rest of the book? Not so much. It wasn't boring, but I wasn't on the edge of my seat either. The ending felt too easy. Can't say much about it without mentioning spoilers, so I won't. Felt like there should have gone more consideration of the situation into the writing of the ending. All in all I enjoyed my time reading this book, but it was nothing special in my eyes. There would've been so much more potential with a plot like this.