Indie has had a hard time with life and school since her mom died. She’s being raised by her grandfather. She’s lonely but keeps people at a distance.

Before senior year of high school, her class is brought on a wilderness trip. The class is broken into groups and given an activity. Indie’s group is rafting. Supposedly the groups were chosen at random and no one can change the group or activity they
were assigned.

Here’s why that sucks for Indie, her mom died on a rafting trip.

Here’s where it’s absolutely necessary to suspend logic...there’s just no way Indie would be forced by her school to go on a rafting trip after her mom died rafting. There’s also not much of a chance that the student with an artificial leg would also be forced to go.

I really can’t picture a school making high school students take such an extreme trip.

Now add in the fact that the tour guide isn’t great either. He’s cutting major corners to save money.

I did like how the characters got to know each other because of the trip. Indie, Skye, Wyatt and Shelby barely knew each other before going. They had likely in common. But they bonded and they left as friends.
Just try to focus on that rather than whether the trip itself was realistic.

I got to read an early ebook edition from NetGalley. Thanks!

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of WHAT THE OTHER THREE DON’T KNOW by Spencer Hyde in exchange for my honest review.***

Four very different teens dealing with various challenges/secrets on a school trip.

Since Karen McManus’s wildly successful ONE OF US IS LYING, other books have tried to use the same Breakfast Club framework of storytelling. Unfortunately , the blurb for WHAT THE OTHER THREE DON’T KNOW is the best part of Spencer Hyde’s sophomore effort.

#OurOwnVoices is a positive movement in literature for people from marginalized groups to tell their own stories. For the most part, these writers can create more authentic and well rounded characters. Spencer Hyde is one of the few exceptions I’ve found as an avid #OurOwnVoices writer, perhaps because, as he says in the foreword, he writes his own story from a myopic perspective, not necessarily a character tells a compelling story.

WHAT THE OTHER THREE DON’T KNOW takes a while to get into the story and other characters. I never warmed up to Indie and didn’t trust the reliability of her narration regarding the other characters.

Fortunately, YA literature has a large representation of #OurOwnVoices books as well as other books on all types of mental health, now often integrated into characters and stories that aren’t Mental Health Books.