We won't all survive by Kate Alice Marshall

Fans of mystery thrillers will be enthralled by We won’t all survive with its nail-biting suspense and exciting action. Mercy Gray is a teen heroine, lauded for saving lives during a mall shooting. She is recruited by billionaire Damien Dare to compete on his survivalist reality TV show and needing the money to help pay for her clever sister’s education, she agrees to go to an isolated mining town. When she arrives with  seven other contestants, she knows things are not right but the gates close without warning trapping them inside the empty set. Then one of them turns up dead and without resources it becomes a race to survive.

The story is told through the eyes of Mercy, a young woman who no longer trusts in her instincts about people. She trusted  the ‘nice’ Ryan who was interested in her sister but who attacked them in the mall, killing several people and now bears the scar from a bullet. Now she is not sure who she can trust. Along with Mercy all the contestants have suffered real life drama, including a shooting, survival at sea and a train wreck but some are hiding secrets. Who is the killer?

Marshall ramps up the tension with  cliff-hangers ending many of the chapters which kept me turning the pages to see what happens next. There are exciting moments as the contestants work through puzzles to retrieve water from a deep well, search through dark tunnels with warning about dangerous chemicals, arsenic in drinking water and barricade themselves in an old chapel.

With likeable protagonists and a twisty mystery, We won't all survive is sure to appeal to readers who enjoy mysteries by Karen McManus and Holly Jackson and survival stories like Wandering wild by Lynette Noni and The surface trials by H.M. Waugh.

Themes: Survival, Celebrities, Reality TV, Resilience, Trust.

Pat Pledger