Lots of twists and turns to keep you reading to find out which "five survive."

Five Survive, by New York Times best-selling young adult author Holly Jackson, starts off with a simple, tried and true premise familiar to fans of thrillers, true crime, and teen horror everywhere: six teenage friends embark on a What Can Go Wrong Road Spring Break road trip, a fun getaway with no adults, no responsibilities, no problems. Driving through a rural part of Philadelphia on their way to Gulf Shores, they blow a tire, realizing very quickly that the tire is no accident, as a sniper, hidden in the woods, shoots out all their tires, punctures a hole in their gas tank, and sends them scrambling to hide in their RV. Turns out, one of them has a secret, the sniper, communicating with them via a Walkie Talkie left outside, says, insisting "you know who you are," promising to let five go if the culprit turns themselves in for their unnamed offense. What follows is a relatively tight, twisty thriller that flips the script on you, more than once, just when you think you know who the one with the secret is.

Our main character, Red Kenny, is an 18-year-old child of a police officer-mother who was killed in the line of duty, now living with her alcoholic father. Unlike the rest of her friends, Arthur, Simon, and well-to-do kids Oliver and Maddy (her best friend), she's struggling financially, the Poor Kid for whom everyone else must float the bill. She gives the reader a haunted, real voice through which to view the story, a story which, though written for a young adult audience, should still appeal to older readers. The suspense is well-crafted, and the teens gradually turn on each other as the sniper grows more and more impatient, firing random bullets into their RV, demanding the one with the secret give themselves up.

Jackson, author of the popular Good Girls Guide to Murder series, along with other thrillers and young adult mysteries, knows her audience and writes them, for the most part, well. She also knows her genre and her books often make me recall the teen thrillers I used to watch (and sometimes still do) in the 90s. Five Survive is a fun, simple read, that'll keep throwing you for a loop until the end.