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.

If you were trying to make it home for the holidays, but your connecting flight got delayed because of a snowstorm, would you do whatever it took to get home to your family? Mira decides to jump in a rental car with four complete strangers and trek through a freaking blizzard. I mean, obviously chaos ensues. There’s so much at stake when your life is in the hands of people you don’t know, in horrifying inclement weather, and if something happens you’re beat because the police are occupied with accidents all over the place. 

Suddenly, people’s belongings start disappearing inside the car. Everyone denies taking them so clearly, someone is a big fat liar. Mira’s gut is telling her something is seriously wrong, but there’s no escaping her situation. She must continue to battle the snowstorm and the four total strangers trapped in the car with her, hoping she can make it home alive. 

I really enjoyed this YA thriller. It was super fast-paced, had my heart pounding, my thoughts running rampant as I was trying to figure out who in the car was the bad guy/girl. Honestly, this book was everything I wanted No Exit to be. The writing was more mature. It got my adrenaline pumping on several occasions. My one gripe was that it became a little but repetitive. Nonetheless, this was a quick, entertaining, and fun read that I was happy to be buckled in for!

Desperate to get home for the holidays, when Mira discovers that her layover flight has been cancelled, she takes a chance and accepts a ride from a near stranger, and hopes for the best. Her hopes are soon dashed, when one catastrophe after another leads her to think that this trip is doomed, and that not only is she unlikely to arrive in time for Christmas, she might never arrive home.

Five Total Strangers is a well crafted thriller which kept me guessing with hints & red herrings that made me legitimately uncertain where the danger was coming from. Such a fun read!

FIVE TOTAL STRANGERS is a mystery/thriller about five students on their way home for Christmas break who are forced to share a car after an untimely blizzard grounds all flights. As these stories go, one of these travelers isn't who they say they are...

I love the secluded cabin/remote island/"Oops We're All Stuck Here Together" mystery trope, so I enjoyed reading this book. I especially liked that it took place in Pennsylvania (PA pride!). The main character, Mira, was also great - she was written to have conviction when most authors could've easily made her a pushover. I did find issues with the pacing and ending, however. I know it's hard to make a car ride exciting but the countless rest stops became a bit boring. The ending felt rushed, as if a chapter or two were missing. I just wish the reveal was given more time to be fleshed out. Despite all this, FIVE TOTAL STRANGERS is not a bad book and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a quick and satisfying read.

A Christmas Eve blizzard and a desperate need to get home to her mom leaves Mira trapped in a car with four total strangers. The threat of disaster looms around every corner, and not just from the blizzard and black-ice roads; everyone (including Mira) has something to hide. Although whose intentions are truly sinister? Only turning those pages will lead you closer to the truth. As the blizzard kicks up flurries of snow, things go from bad to worse to couldn’t get any worse to… it gets worse. And our five total strangers are in trouble.
Narrated in the first person by main character Mira, who is passionate about art and an aspiring artist, the story is filled with vivid and engaging descriptions. Also, first-person narrators can lie, and so can everything Mira says be trusted? It’s another piece of the puzzle that will test your brain as you try to figure out what’s really going on. The end ties everything up nicely, but left me wanting for a few more pages to spend with the characters.
If you’re looking for a book to kick up your heartbeat, this is it.

Natalie D. Richards does not disappoint with her newest thriller. I couldn't put the book down! I needed to know what really happened. Ms. Richards books appeal to both teens and adults.

My thoughts about Five Total Strangers are still percolating, but I do have some opinions to share while they're brewing.
So, we start out with Mira, the main character, trying to get home for Christmas. Unfortunately for her, there's a monster blizzard between the airport and her house. A chatty, friendly girl named Harper, who sat next to Mira on the flight, offers a ride in her rental car. She has picked up a few other stranded people, all around Mira's age, who are heading in the same direction. Mira decides she doesn't want to wait in the airport, and she agrees to ride with Harper and Company to her hometown of Pittsburgh. The three other passengers, besides Mira and Harper, are Kayla, Josh, and Brecken.
Almost immediately after setting out, inexplicable things start happening, and Mira starts to think she made a mistake.

Natalie D. Richards did a great job setting a sinister tone, and ramping up the tension page by page. At different times during the book, I swore I had it figured out, only for the next sentence to completely change my mind. 
I would classify Five Total Strangers as YA Suspense, as the book is teeming with it. I did have a vague sense of "nothing is really happening". There was an undercurrent of menace, but the action left me wanting. Then the climax and ending arrived all at once, a bit abruptly. So, if you are in the mood for a sinister suspense young adult book, this one should do it for you. Just don't expect rip roaring action, you'll be getting more of a slow, simmering dread.
3 stars

I received a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and Netgalley.

3.5 rounded to a 4 ⭐️

This book follows 5 young adults stranded at the airport. They decided to rent a car together despite being strangers. 
From then on nothing goes according to plan. 

I have mixed feelings on this book. 
I read it in a matter of hours because the whole story is intense and keeps you on your toes. 

I found myself frustrated with all the choices the characters made. I understand they were young adults but seriously? Do people not watch dateline these days 😅

I wish we could have gotten more back stories on the characters. 
I did figure out the twist right away, I think the author tried to confuse us but that’s what made me figure it out. 

Overall it was a quick read and I liked it enough. I enjoyed the writing style and I’d love to read more by the author.

My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Mira just wants to get home to her mom's house for Christmas, but the blizzard has made that seem impossible. But when the person she sat next to on the plane and had started a conversation with offers her to ride along with her and several other people Mira decides to do it. Along this journey, Mira learns not only things about her mom and what has been happening why she was away at school, but that the people she is traveling with don't know each other at all. 
Them not knowing each other because a bit of a problem like I'm sure you can suspect as the drive goes on, conditions get worse, and the anxiety they all start feeling about getting home safely rises.
 
Overall I loved this book. I was unable to figure out who it was the entire time, and I loved the little bits of the letters we got to see that the person wrote to Mira. It made it all extremely creepy because it was obvious it was someone in the car, and it was someone she had potentially been around before. The arguments they all started to get in and how things started to happen that weren't normal just made this book even creepier as time went on. At times this book reminded me of the movie Dead End with some of the situations that happened and how the drive just kept going on and on forever with all these strange things happening and everyone acting weird after a while. Mira does eventually start putting the pieces together of what is happening and tries to fix it but it all ends up blowing up in the end and I was not expecting it to end as it did. I did love end up liking the ending because I wasn't able to figure out until Mira did and I was truly surprised by this book multiple times and the direction it took. 
I highly recommend this book if you want a fast-paced Christmassy mystery/thriller read.

I absolutely flew through this.
I thought the book did a great job at exploring how grief effects someone, even a year later. I saw my own grief in the main character as well as the strength she feels she needs to present to those around her.
This is literally the road trip from hell. The book also does a great job of showing why the character continues to stay in this situation despite the red flags. I think that's one of the most difficult things to do in a thriller because it sometimes seems like the characters are making stupid decisions to advance the plot. In this book, I completely understand why she gets in the car with strangers and the surrounding weather circumstances make it so that she has to stay in the car even when things are going wrong. 
The setting was definitely the standout. The book really fleshed out how unforgiving and scary the winter can be.
I also appreciated some of the side characters story lines though at times they felt a bit rushed and not fleshed out enough.
It was so easy to read and I felt compelled to continue.
There were definitely some flaws though. After about 10 different things go wrong it starts to feel a little bit ridiculous and over the top. There are reasons for this of course but it still feels a bit much as you're reading it. The main characters inner dialogue also gets a bit irritating as she goes around and round with her paranoid thoughts. I was able to over look these things as I think they serve a purpose but it was a bit grating. 
The main thing I didn't like was the reveal. It was a bit obvious and it was done in a way I've seen before. 
I think many people will enjoy this.

You can tell by the turbulence as the plane lands in wintry Newark on Christmas Eve that things are going to get tense in this compulsively readable thriller.  Mira is flying home to her mom when all the flights out of the airport get cancelled because of an approaching blizzard.  But with Pittsburgh only 7 hours away by car, Mira chooses to accept a ride from a seemingly harmless group of college students headed that way in a rental car.  

What could possibly go wrong? The five are soon battling the elements and each other as Mira starts to realize that she’s actually not with a group of friends. These four people just met each other at the airport as well and all of them seem to have something to hide. 

Full disclosure:  I travelled on I-80 through Pennsylvania during a winter storm that had people sliding off the road.  Major flashbacks for me.  Natalie D. Richards describes the anxiety of being held hostage to weather conditions and the amount of second guessing that goes into winter car travel.