2.5 stars!

Mira is travelling home for Christmas across the country. When she lands in, her connecting flight is cancelled due to an intense blizzard that is rapidly approaching. She runs into her seatmate from her flight, Harper, who has managed to find a rental SUV. When Harper offers Mira a ride, she can’t turn her down as she is feeling a lot of pressure to get home to her grieving mother. Mira finds out that Harper has invited three other strangers to join them and becomes uneasy but she doesn’t see any other choice. On her journey home, their situation becomes increasingly worse as the storm settles in.

@sourcebooksfire sent me this ARC and I am so grateful! I always love the chance to read on paper instead of digitally. Unfortunately, this was just not an enjoyable read for me. I found Mira to be annoying as there is a lot of time spent exploring her anxiety around the decisions she’s made and not a lot of common sense. She repeatedly chooses not to contact her parents when she is in an obviously perilous situation. I did really like Richards’ depiction of grief and how it can impact people differently as Mira’s aunt passed away last year and her family is still trying to recover. There wasn’t anything that I didn’t guess - I thought the story was missing some red herrings. I am thinking I have been very spoiled for YA thrillers after reading Karen McManus’ books - she is a tough act to follow. Overall, an easy read with a few moments of tension.

Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards is a psychological thriller about a high school student named Mira who is trying to get home for Christmas to be with her family. She ends up hitching a ride home with four strangers, and things start going wrong almost immediately. This story was quite unbelievable at times, but it did keep my interest until the very end. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

Great mystery with lots of action to keep a reader interested. Spun in a way that had me accusing every character at some point.

Would recommend!

“I do not climb into cars with a group of strangers or jaunt off into a snowstorm. This isn’t something I’d normally do, but to get home to Mom? I’ll do whatever it takes.” These are Mira’s last thoughts before she indeed becomes one of Five Total Strangers stuck in a car together. Unfortunately, one is not just a stranger but also deranged. And a blizzurricane is predicted...

This book is pitch perfect for the way young adults think. Nothing bad could possibly happen. The snowstorm is over-hyped. The feeling of invincibility slowly turns to worry, then fear. Will any of the strangers make it home for Christmas?

Are you ready for a non-stop thrill ride? Five Total Strangers doesn’t let up on the throttle. Even when stopping for gas, the group encounters weird subplots about each other and other travelers around them.

If you want a thrill-a-minute plot with characters you come to care for, read this book. You won’t be sorry. 4.25 stars!

Thanks to Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book was perfect for a quick suspense/thriller read. Just in time for Halloween (or Christmas since it takes place on Christmas Eve)! I really enjoyed the fast- pace of this book, and the pure goosebumps I got several times while reading. It definitely makes you NEVER want to get in a car with a stranger (not that any of us ever would, right?)
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Five Total Strangers reminded me so much of No Exit but without the gore. Unfortunately, the only complaint I have was that I found it a little predictable. I usually can never guess what’s going to happen, but with this one I did. Perfect for Halloween, or if you want a Christmas Thriller.

This is a slow-burn psychological thriller that kept me enraptured from cover to cover. There is no prologue with a gritty murder to open this book. In fact, it all starts out fairly normal, yet the words and events still carry a sharp edge to them. We first meet Mira when she’s on a plane on Christmas Eve during a blizzard. The plane hits turbulence, and the stress that Mira feels about this, despite being a frequent flyer, nearly oozes off the pages.

A lot of the creepy things that happen in the early pages of this book are easily explained away. I love how Mira questions her paranoia and isn’t sure if anything malicious is actually going on. The four strangers that she’s traveling with are all “normal” at a surface level, but there are little unsettling quirks and unlikeable personality characteristics that make themselves known the longer they travel together. Harper seems to have two different personalities that don’t quite mesh. Brecken seems like a nice pre-med student, yet he says several misogynistic things that bring his “niceness” into question. Josh also comes across as kind, but he can be condescending and pushy. Kayla is the quiet one in the group, and she is sleeping far too much. They all have their secrets, even Mira, who’s pretending to be a college student out of fear that they wouldn’t let her tag along if she told them she was still in high school.

Throughout the novel, we’re made privy to the content of letters to Mira that were mailed to her over the last year. Last year Mira’s Aunt Phoebe died after a long battle with cancer, and when she was in the hospital, a kind stranger bought her a coffee. While it’s obvious that Mira doesn’t remember this stranger, the stranger remembers her. These letters detail this stranger’s growing obsession with her, and it quickly becomes clear that they’ve found her. They’re one of the four strangers she’s travelling with–but which one?

While the events escalate quite gradually, the book is far from boring. Every little possibly innocuous thing that goes wrong seems suspicious. Not only is one of the strangers potentially dangerous, but they’re also battling the elements and other unpredictable obstacles in their journey home. I did notice that the group tended to have long, drawn out conversations while outside the car a few too many times. Maybe blizzards are different in the US than in Canada (I mean, I’m sure they are), but I was expecting the snow and ice that was causing thirty-car pileups on the highway to be a deterrent for standing outside and chatting. That said, emotions were running high, and if they’re afraid to get back into the car with strangers, maybe a little frostbite is preferrable to being shanked by a new “friend”. Aside from this little criticism, the events of this book are quite plausible, making this into one of the more realistic psychological thrillers that I’ve read in a while.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for an intense slow-burn thriller featuring suspicious characters, questionable choices, and unpredictable weather.

*Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and Netgalley for the ebook to review*
*This review will be posted to https://powerlibrarian.wordpress.com/ and other platforms on October 10, 2020*

Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards will suck you into a snowstorm of stress and second guessing yourself. I can’t recommend a more perfect spooky read to launch you into a fall mood and make you feel jumpy right before Halloween.

After spending the semester in sunny San Diego at art school with her dad, Mira is anxious to get home for Christmas with her mom in Pennsylvania. Their duo used to be a trio—Mira, her mom, and her Aunt Phoebe did everything together until Aunt Phoebe died of cancer exactly one year. However, during her layover, she learns that her second leg has been cancelled, thanks to a record-breaking snowstorm. To make matters worse, when she calls her stepfather to check on her mom, he reveals that they’re getting a divorce—and her mom never told her.

More desperate than ever to get home to her emotional mother who surely needs her, she accepts the ride offered by her seatmate on the plane, Harper, who’s driving home with a group of her college friends. From the very beginning, Mira has a bad feeling about these friends. Both boys, Brecken and Josh, seem like nice guys, but are looks deceiving? Kayla, meanwhile, sleeps slumped against the window for the majority of the drive, and when she is awake, she says weird, random things that make Mira’s skin crawl. Still, she trusts Harper, and if these are Harper’s friends, she should be safe.

Then, at their first stop, Harper notices that her wallet is missing. Fingers start to point. Apparently, these four aren’t all friends, like Mira originally assumed, but total strangers. Next, Josh’s book goes missing. Then, Mira’s phone. Finally, the map. This is too much to be a coincidence. Meanwhile, the storm continues to get worse and worse. Pileups dot the snowy roads and drivers can’t see even a few feet in front of them. Mira tries to fight her growing instinct to panic, telling herself that she’s overreacting, but finally, the evidence is too great to ignore. Someone in the car doesn’t want them to reach their location.

Now, this is a pretty typical thriller, but I applaud it for keeping me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Every time I would start to grow complacent, start to think, “Oh, maybe I can trust this guy,” something shifts, and suddenly, I wasn’t so sure anymore. Although I had an idea of who was behind it all (and I turned out to be right), I kept second guessing myself until the very last page. Mira second guesses not only the people around her, but her own judgement. In the end, her judgement turns out to be wrong, leading her to question if she can trust herself at all.

Beyond the suspense, I really appreciated that this story wasn’t just action, but it had an emotional core as well. For most of the novel, Mira’s thoughts are dominated by worry for her mother. This worry is what drives her to fight so hard to get home, sometimes making unwise decisions. I also enjoyed her dynamic with the other four characters. Mira is still in high school, making her younger than everyone else, and it was interesting to watch that play out on the page. I’m used to always being the youngest in the room, so I related to Mira’s feelings of smallness and ignorance.

My main complaint would probably be the ending. While I enjoyed how it played out, and I wouldn’t change what happens, I wish it had been drawn out more. The novel ends pretty quickly once the mystery sabotager is found, and I wish we had more time in the aftermath with Mira, her mother, and her best friend.

Overall, this is a quick, fun, gripping October read, perfect for this season. For all you thriller fans out there, I highly recommend it!

“Stranger danger” is something that’s been ingrained in me ever since childhood, and I suspect I should thank it for keeping me alive this long. Still, there are times when you have no other choice than to rely on a stranger, whether it be for a few extra quarters at the cash register or a ride home.

While I’d love to believe that we live in a perfect world and every human I come across is as opposed to randomly murdering me as I am, we’ve all heard the real-life horror stories where someone trusted a stranger they shouldn’t have. It’s rare, but it’s a fear we all hold in the back of our minds, warning us of the potential dangers lurking behind every pair of eyes we come across on the street.

Five Total Strangers flawlessly embodies this anxiety.

When Mira had no other option but to hitch a ride with four other strangers, I found myself fearing for her from the get-go, even when nothing nefarious had yet to occur. The plot's genius lies in its setup: five strangers in one car, trapped by a blizzard. There’s no escaping.

As a result, Richards’ extraordinary writing takes center stage as the relationships — or what little of them — between characters slowly started to form tensions that are just waiting to explode. Every character had their own flaws, strengths and suspicions, but they’re each so nuanced it’s impossible to know who to distrust.

This uncertainty made every bone-chilling, jaw-dropping event that occurred all the more fearsome, as I felt just as confused as Mira herself. After all, can you ever truly believe what a stranger tells you?

As with any thriller, Richards ensured to throw in a fair share of twists and turns throughout the plot to keep me on my toes. Without giving away too much, one of my favorite additions was the unique and downright terrifying use of mysterious letters that were interjected between some chapters.

What made the novel truly shine was how easy it was to place myself in Mia’s shoes. Besides being a relatable and well-developed character, her reactions never made me throw up my hands in frustration like some other thrillers might. This is not to say I necessarily agree with every choice she made, but it does mean her actions were always in-tune with her character — not because the story needed something to happen. Like any human being, she questioned her intuition, fell victim to others’ lies and allowed fear to cloud her judgment.

While it also touched on grief and loss, this theme of constantly doubting your own instincts and wishes just to please others is one that resonated well, and I expect many readers will connect to it.

Ultimately, it all leads up to one twisty, pulse-pounding finale that pulled all the pieces together perfectly. When many thrillers struggle to have a worthwhile ending, Five Total Strangers is a welcome exception to the trend. While it’s not complete perfection and some readers may have to suspend their disbelief during some moments, Richards still wholeheartedly delivered on her promises — and then some. And, after finally knowing how everything fits in place, I’m looking forward to completing a second read.

If that’s not evidence of a book’s success, then I’m not sure what is.

I didn't even realize this was more of a YA book when requested but that didn't matter. Started off really strong, then just as I thought it was starting to drag a bit it picked right up again. I ended up really enjoying this book. A bit of a creep factor, fast paced and a lot of fun!

This is my first experience with Richards' writing - and I am quite sure that it won't be my last! This one is suspenseful from the very start! Mira is trying to get home to her mother for Christmas. Her mother, still grieving for the twin sister that passed a year earlier, also inspires plenty of guilt in Mira for abandoning her for the other side of the country for school. But inclement weather disturbs Mira's travel plans and she decides to ride share in a rental car with four other people - and it's not long before everyone is doubting one another, things go missing and sabotage is suspected.

The book is fast-paced and chilling! It's easy to sympathize with Mira and it's hard to predict all the twists and turns of the plot. I think that this one has a great visual appeal too, and it would be easy to see this as thrilling film. Tension mounts from almost every angle and while the ending may leave a few things unaddressed, it doesn't stop this from being a satisfying winter thriller from start to finish! And while Mira's age makes this more of a YA read, I think that adult readers would also be riveted by her plight. It will certainly make you think twice about driving or flying in a snowstorm!

I think this was such a fun YA thriller. Yes, there were a few moments I thought it seemed a little unrealistic but overall I was super into this book..
There were notes written my Mira’s stalker in between chapters and those CREEPED me out. They definitely added to the thriller aspect of this book and gave me Joe Goldberg from You vibes.

I liked that each of the strangers had something that just seemed off about them and so it kept you guessing which person was behind everything. However, I didn’t feel like there was a lot of character development and I wanted to see a little more fire in Mira towards the end.

Overall I enjoyed this book and it definitely kept me interested until the end!

Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards is the story of Mira and her quest to get home to her mother on Christmas so she doesn't have to spend it alone with terrible, haunting memories.

Mira hops on a plane to head home for Christmas to be with her mother but we soon learn that there is a massive blizzard about to hit. Her plane lands but she cannot catch her next one because all flights have been canceled. Great, now how does she get home? She can't imagine leaving her mother alone at a time like this when just last year on Christmas day she and her mother lost someone very precious to them. But what else can she do? Oh, that's right, her awesome seatmate on the plane invited her on a car ride across Pennsylvania, she should probably take her up on that offer, right?

WRONG....

Just Mira and her seatmate, Harper, ends up turning into Mira, Harper, and 3 total strangers. They are all college kids though so Mira thinks she's pretty safe; plus she can't leave her mom alone. She just can't. So five total strangers rent an SUV and set off from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in hopes of making it home for the holidays.

I'll be home for the holidays...? Not if you are dead, you won't.

I really enjoyed this book. I LOVE snow but driving in it scares the crap out of me. Oh, and guess what? I am VERY familiar with the route these kids take in the book so you better believe I was yelling at them when they decided to switch routes. YOU DON'T TAKE THAT DANG HIGHWAY, GUYS!!!! But did they listen to me? Noooo, of course not. So they end up pretty much stranded in a blizzard in the middle of fricken Pennsyltucky. You might think things couldn't get worse but oh they most certainly do! Things start to go missing, one of the strangers might be a drug addict, one might be a felon and one might be Mira's stalker, the stalker Mira doesn't know she has.

In the end, this story really freaked me out. The snow, the location, and me being very well acquainted with it and just the overall atmosphere of the book is the perfect recipe for thrills and chills. And at the end of the book, the only advice I can give anyone is TRUST YOUR GUT!

Overall, I gave the book 4.5/5 stars.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CF-2kpAAEg-/?igshid=1qcy84fgpcjkr

https://hellojennyreviews.blogspot.com/2020/10/revew-five-total-strangers-by-natalie-d.html?m=1

This book was so nerve-wracking and fast paced, I really enjoyed it.
We follow Mira, who after getting stranded at the airport on Christmas eve, agrees to go with 4 people she doesn't know in a car to drive through a snowstorm.
This turns out to be a bad idea.
There were a lot of really creepy parts to this, and the atmosphere of paranoia and weirdness really shines through. And the anxiety! The idea of driving through a snowstorm and driving past all these car wrecks and narrowly escaping death is terrifying, and so well-portrayed.
I still enjoyed the book enough that the sort of predictable ending didn't bother me, but I know it might bother some other people. To me this book is less of a thriller because of the sort of whodunit and more for the vibes and the dire situation.
Overall a really solid read, and also I am never getting on a highway in the winter again.

I would first like to thank Sourcebooks Fire for providing me with an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This book will be released on October 6th, 2020

I did not know what to expect going into this book. I don't read many YA Thrillers, and the ones I have read have not been my favorite (in fact, some of them I have DESPISED!). However, the plot of Five Total Strangers seemed to be one that I would really enjoy, so I gave it a chance! I did enjoy my reading of this book, but there were also some problems that I had with it.

I really enjoyed that a lot of the novel was fast-paced... the reader was propelled through the book by the immense number of secrets at which were being hinted at the end of each chapter. I liked that Natalie D. Richards was able to craft characters with such seemingly shifting motives. She was really good at making it seem like it could be ALL of the characters that are up to no good. I enjoyed Richards' use of a red herring, not all author's can pull off that device, but Richards did. I liked the action sequences because they were truly intense, and had me at the edge of my seat. I REALLY loved that the book wrapped up almost IMMEDIATELY after the action! It's so common for thrillers to go on for 50 pages after the final action takes place, and it was so refreshing to read an intense scene and then almost immediately be finished with the book.

However, the reasons I deducted two stars from my rating are:

1) There were moments where this booked lulled... and lulled HARD. As aforementioned, much of the book was fast-paced... however, there were many scenes in the book that I TRUDGED through because of the lack of anything interesting going on.

2) There were some moments, and aspects of characters that seemed to be entirely irrelevant an unnecessary to the overall story. For example, Mira's love for art. In almost every chapter, Mira mentioned her love of art... and sometimes it was SO out of place. She would be talking about painting a tragic scene that she had just witnessed, or mention how she would recreate an image she saw while going through an intense sequence; it just didn't seem to have any point in the story. I get that she was off at school in CA because of her art... but the art aspect could've been removed from the story, and the story would not have changed at all.

3) The anti-climactic, revealed secrets. Richards builds up, for the reader, such intense suspicion of each of the characters and the secrets they're harboring. However, when those secrets are revealed, the audience is left with a SEVERE case of, for lack of a better word, blue-balls from the secrets not being ANYTHING of importance. Except for the secret of the "plot twist," which brings me to...

4) The "plot-twist" was predictable from the beginning. I don't want to say too much about this because I don't want to spoil it... but I saw the revealed antagonist as THE antagonist from the beginning... I was hoping that Richards would switch it up a bit, and choose someone else to be the antagonist because, to me, it was obvious. I was caught off guard by the FIRST part of the plot twist, and I was ACTUALLY hoping that THAT was the FULL-TWIST... but alas, it didn't hit the mark for me.

So overall, this book gets 3/5 stars for me. It was an average thriller read (which is better than most YA thrillers I've read). I'd say that the negatives and positives even themselves out to create a book that, if you're new to thriller novels, may be intriguing to you.

This book will make a great movie!

I thoroughly enjoy it. It was a fast read that I finished in 1 sitting and it can count as a cross over from young adult to adult fiction.

A chanced meeting on a plane and a blizzard = your worst nightmare.

It's a year after Mira's aunt, and her mom's twin sister passed away. It's also Xmas eve and she wants to get home to her mom but her connecting flight is cancelled due to a terrible snowstorm. a Girl she sat next to on the flight invites her to join her and 3 other young people in taking a car so they can get to their destinations.......cue horror music because this is where it all goes wrong. Are all the people in the car who they seem to be or are there more sinister reasons for 1 of them to be there?

Look this is not a storyline we haven't seen before but I still enjoyed it very much and it kept me guessing till the end. The 1 fringe character was not needed in my opinion but I can understand why he was there because it added to the sinister feel of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I’ve read many Natalie D. Richards books in the past few years and always enjoy them. When I saw Five Total Strangers, I was ready to read.

From the start, Five Total Strangers hooked me. It wasn’t that it was jam packed with action, but Richards created a great sense of wonder right from the start. What good could come of a group of young adults and teenagers attempting to drive through a blizzard together? Not much. And not knowing them? No thank you. I needed to know how this would play out.

Richards definitely built up that sense of dread that main character Mira was feeling the entire trip. I was suspicious of everyone and Richards did a fantastic job of getting me to feel those feelings along with the characters. Each of the characters were intriguing in their own way and I found myself guessing constantly what their secrets could be. The story line never stalled out and had me flipping pages trying to find out how it was going to end. And honestly… I did not see it coming.

If you love a good suspense novel twisted in with a YA Fiction theme, although this book would be great for all ages, then Five Total Strangers will definitely be one to read. An absolute page turner that will keep your heart rate high the entire time.

You know that feeling when you’re enjoying a book so much, you can’t put it down? Five Total Strangers gave me that feeling from the very beginning.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for providing me with this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

When I say I love Thriller books, this is the kind of book I’m talking about! Fast-paced, no-nonsense, creepy in all the right places, simple Thrillers like this. This is exactly my kind of book. If you're looking for a Thriller to fly through in one weekend, I recommend you try out this book!

For context, I don’t often feel this way. This is a special occurrence for me! However, whenever I can’t put a book down, it usually has a lot to do with personal preference – what I enjoy about a book rather than what makes it a good story in general. (I’m also the kind of person who enjoys a thriller simply because it “wasn’t too predictable”, so there’s that.)

I was on the edge of my seat for most of this book. It was mostly well-paced, and I was genuinely curious about many aspects. I wanted Mira to get home to her mom. I wanted to figure out another mystery that I cannot tell you about because it’s not in the synopsis. I was desperate to know how everyone was going to survive! I flew through this book so fast, it got me out of a month-long reading slump!

While the overall book kept me on the edge of my seat, the ending felt a bit… rushed. Everything happened so fast, and I didn’t have time to process it. This might have been something on my part, or it might have been an actual issue but was changed for the final draft. Although I liked this book a lot, I also felt like the characters could have been more developed and the ending could have been more developed. For this reason, I’m putting 4 points under my “personal emotions” rating system category, for liking this book even though I normally would have taken more points off.

Either way, this book was exactly what I needed in my life during this spooky season, so I was really caught up in the moment while reading it! It was a fun and fast Thriller, perfect for this time of the year.

Rating System
Character like-ability: 3.5
Character development: 3
Plot development: 4
Writing style: 3.5
Dialogue: 3.5
Personal emotions: 4

3.58 ≈ 3.5 stars. Rounded to 4 for this review.

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.

WOAH that was a wild ride! A build-up thriller that you'll want to cuddle up by the fireplace and devour this one. Other than A Good Girls Guide to Murder I haven't read a YA thriller like this before. There were definitely hear racing scenes but I would have enjoyed more! The writing was exceptional. The excerpts from another voice throughout the story added a chilling edge to the book. The characters are portrayed in various ways where it keeps your guessing throughout This book was so much better than I expected!
Recommended for AGGGTM & Good Girl, Bad Blood fans!

Synopsis: Mira is heading home to Pittsburgh to spend Christmas with her family when a blizzard hits. Flight is cancelled. Desperate to get home, Mira decides to catch a ride with a group of strangers, whom also do not know each other. Weather conditions worsen, suspense builds up, and a deadly disaster is ahead.

PUB DAY is Tuesday 10/6 so be on the lookout for this one!!!
Thank you Sourcebooks and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an honest review.

I love a Young Adult thriller and books set during a snow storm. While I enjoyed Five Total Strangers, it didn't really feel like thriller to me until the end. It seemed like more of a mystery throughout. While I enjoyed it, something was missing for me.