Book Review: Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards

Five Total Strangers

Author: Natalie D. Richards

Publication Date: 06 October 2020

Genre: New Adult – Thriller

Pages: 320

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

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.

This is a NA thriller that follows five strangers who decide to share a rental car to get to PA after all flights from Newark are cancelled. Now, you may be thinking this is a stretch but it’s Christmas and a blizzard, so time is of the essence.

Even you can’t picture yourself in this situation, I promise this book is still a thrilling read.

The writing is so incredibly detailed and atmospheric. There were some scenes that had my heart pumping as well as my stomach doing flips from the sheer adrenaline rush. After one of the really intense scenes, I had to put the book down just so I could breathe and slow my heart rate down.

This is literally the road trip from hell and everything that can go wrong does. In addition to the wild road trip, our MC (Mira) has a stalker and the letters from the stalker are dispersed throughout the plot, which adds even more tension to an already dire situation.

My major criticism is that the high octane pace comes to a crashing halt because the final reveal takes place in the last 30 pages or so and then the book then abruptly ends. I definitely think that this could have been flushed out a bit more to give a really solid 4 star story.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for providing a review copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.