This was a pretty average YA mystery with a really dense main character. 'I feel so scared and nervous doing this scavenger hunt but I'll keep doing it because maybe I'll win and everything will be alright after all it's a game isn't it?' No lady, it is not. There are menacing messages and you are being stalked at every turn and clearly someone knows what you did last summer...wait...wrong book but pretty much the same idea. It ended exactly as I predicted it would. This would be good for teenagers looking to read their first mystery however, it does come with some significant content warnings for domestic violence. ( )

Seven friends, seven secrets. How far would you go to protect your sibling? That’s what Cleo needs to figure out when the mysterious scavenger hunt begins. I enjoyed this mystery; started out slow but picked up near the end. I figured out who the “Unknown caller” was about 1/2 way through, but kept reading just to find out if I was correct. Cleo is definitely a fighter; her friends are good at keeping secrets, ones she needed to have come out in the open in order to save herself and her brother. This is one for mystery lovers. ( )

Content warning for this book: domestic abuse.

On her eighteenth birthday, Cleo discovers that someone has left an invitation to a scavenger hunt on her sink while she was showering. Which is super creepy, but initially she thinks her best friend Hope or her brother Connor left it. No such luck. As she works her way through the scavenger hunt to find the next clues, it becomes increasingly clear that whoever set this game up knew a lot about Cleo's relationship with her boyfriend, Declan, who drowned during a trip he, Cleo, and their friends took a year ago. And whoever it is doesn't plan to stop this game until all the secrets from that trip are out in the open.

I see a YA thriller and I want to read it. Thankfully, they seem to be big right now, and I keep finding cheap ones I haven't read at Walmart. This one reminded me strongly of one the less supernatural Christopher Pike books I used to devour as a teen, although those tended to be even more messed up and soapy.

I got a kick out of the way the book unraveled some of the characters' lies, although I really wish certain moments had been drawn out better. Unfortunately, the initial setup wasn't that great - I kept wondering why the rafting trip was treated like such a dirty secret when it was pretty obvious that the stuff that went down during it was all self-defense. I could believe Cleo convincing herself that she'd done something horrible, but the way everyone else treated that trip like some big secret they couldn't talk about didn't ring true to me, especially considering what was eventually revealed about how much everyone knew.

Too much of this story's big reveal depended upon a bunch of the characters basically not talking to each other for a year, even when it didn't make sense. I wasn't impressed with the way things worked out. That said, it was a quick read with occasional suspenseful moments, so I got what I wanted out of it.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

This sounds interesting

It is Cleo’s birthday! A gift with a strange message is left in the bathroom while she is in the shower. She calls everyone she knows and no one has left it for her. So, she and her best friend decide to follow the message in the gift. Well, this leads them on a scavenger hunt with a possible deadly end!

Talk about intense! This story is intense from front to back! Cleo is a young girl with a tragic past. The author does a fabulous job slowly untangling Cleo’s past for the reader. This just adds to the intensity, add in the creepy gifts that keep arriving for the scavenger hunt, my stomach was in knots! And then the ENDING! OH MY!

The narrator, Natasha Soudek, absolutely MADE this book. She became the character Cleo. I am now on the look out this narrator. She is one of the best! And, I have never read this author (oh my!) I have now added her books to my tbr list!

Need a novel that will have you on the edge of your seat…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.

I received this from the publisher for a honest review. ( )