Book Review: Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards
Five Total Strangers
Author: Natalie D. Richards
Published: October 6, 2020
Audiobook
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: November 14-17, 2021
Jessica’s Rating: 1 star
Book Description:
A hitched ride home in a snow storm turns sinister when one of the passengers is plotting for the ride to end in disaster.
When Mira flies home to spend Christmas with her mother in Pittsburgh, a record-breaking blizzard results in a cancelled layover. Desperate to get to her grief-ridden mother in the wake of a family death, Mira hitches a ride with a group of friendly college kids who were on her initial flight.
As the drive progresses and weather conditions become more treacherous, Mira realizes that the four other passengers she’s stuck in the car with don’t actually know one another.
Soon, they’re not just dealing with heavy snowfall and ice-slick roads, but the fact that somebody will stop at nothing to ensure their trip ends in a deadly disaster.
Jessica’s Review:
Five Total Strangers shows the stupidity and drama of young adults and why car companies don’t tend to rent cars to people under age 25! Mira is a high schooler flying alone trying to get home for Christmas. Her plane lands as a huge blizzard is set to hit the area. With her anxiousness to get home, Mira decides to catch a ride with her flight seatmate Harper and friends. But things are actually far from what they appear…As everyone in the car are actually strangers to each other and someone is up to no good!
The whole novel is in the car with few stops and the drama that continues. The group faces wreck after wreck as the weather worsens and their phones start dying and things start disappearing.
This is a novel that shows that having common sense works; Don’t go out in weather that is going downhill fast with complete strangers as you could be risking your life in multiple ways. Unfortunately, most people (including all of our characters) do not have common sense these days, but then we would not have this novel if Mira did!
The novel just did not work for me as we arrived to the climax and found out the responsible party. It came too much out of left field and there were also some outstanding questions left at the end. These characters were not sympathetic at all, so I did not care what happened to them. I have been lucky in the past that most of the YA/NA (Young Adult/ New Adult) books I have read have not had the overbearing drama that this novel did, otherwise I would not be able to read YA/NA!
Unfortunately, this is not a novel I can recommend.