Five Total Strangers is a solid young adult thriller with a fantastic backdrop to a chilling story. While much of the plot was predictable for me (I've read so many books like this that its hard to completely surprise me) I did enjoy the story for what it was. I think many readers are going to really enjoy this one.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller that will give you chills - and not just because the very story is told through a raging snowstorm!

This story will keep you hooked as you flip through the pages and follow these five strangers as they drive through a blizzard with the intent of making it home to their families safe and sound. Not only do they have to keep their eyes on the road and keep the car on the road during the storm, but they also have to be careful of one another. Can you truly trust someone you do not know? Are you safe around someone you have just met and decide to jump into a car with?

Not everyone is as they seem, and first appearances may not be everything. It begs the question - can you trust your gut instincts when you first meet someone for the first time? Can a total stranger actually be trusted, or should you watch your back?

A definite must read that you will devour!

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 4 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

This story of a girl trying to get home to see her mother for Christmas, even if it means riding in a car through a snowstorm with total strangers, didn't quite meet my expectations. I thought it was going to be more thrilling, but I had the culprit pegged early in the book, and it was frustrating for me to see our protagonist miss signs. However, my students love books by Natalie D. Richards, so we will purchase this one. It isn't her strongest novel, but it also isn't terrible. I'm sure it will hit well with my students when the snow starts to fall and they are looking for books in that kind of landscape.

I really enjoyed this twisty YA novel. It has all the elements of a good YA thriller: five strangers stuck together in unfavorable weather, creepy happenings, and a surprise villain.

Hold on to your hats, Natalie Richards fans!  You're in for another crazy ride!  

FIve Total Strangers is a YA thriller that follows Mira, a high school student making her way to her mother's home in Pittsburgh, from California, where her father lives and she attends school.  It's important for Mira to be with her mom at Christmas, because her aunt died during a recent Christmas season, and Mira knows her mom is still emotionally fragile in regard to losing her sister.
During a planned layover, Mira learns that all flights are being cancelled due to an impending snowstorm.  When offered the chance to share a rental car with a girl she met on the plane, Mira agrees, and finds herself traveling with four college students-two female and two male-none of whom knew each other before the road trip began.

As they travel, it becomes clear that someone in the car is not who they claim to be, and has plans to do harm.  

I simply could not put this book down.  Each character has a very different background from the others, so it's interesting to see how each one handles the various situations that they find themselves in during this road trip.  The characters are not only up against an unidentified threat in the car, but they're also up against the weather, and their own personal baggage. I really enjoyed seeing how each person's background played a role in the way that they reacted to the situations that arise during the trip.  This is a terrific addition to a classroom collection or middle school/high school library.

Thanks go to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I'm a sucker for anything Natalie D. Richards, so, of course, I had to request it. And, after reading, YES, I will be purchasing the novel for my bookshelf!

Never let down by this author. She write good thriller/suspense novels. I feel like I've had a hard time finding good suspense YA, so she's always perfect. It was a good book. Although I had an inkling of what was going on the whole time, she still had be second guessing myself, and at the end, I was a bit surprised. Definitely creepy. I enjoyed the book.

Five Total Strangers is compulsively readable writing that, while not necessarily complex, doesn’t fall into cliché, either; the story sweeps you along, and it’s a fairly quick read!

Stuck in the middle of a terrible blizzard, Mira Reynolds is desperate to make it home for Christmas—even if it means getting into a car full of complete strangers. Strangers who are just as desperate as she is to be reunited with their families… except one. Turns out while everyone’s keeping secrets, there is one person hiding much, much more.

Not only do the five of them have to contend with car accidents on icy roads and escaping from gun-toting gas station owners, someone in the car is acting with sinister motives. Things begin to go missing. Their snow chains and charging ports have been tampered with.

Someone doesn't want them to get home.

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I really think the author did a good job of weaving in other elements beyond just the mystery/thriller/survival-in-a-snowstorm plot. Mira grapples with grief for her aunt Phoebe’s death, a grief she’s suppressed for an entire year as her mother fell apart and Mira found herself having to be strong in her stead. At the same time, Mira’s just beginning to patch up a shattering friendship-breakup with her best friend, Zari, and the book also talks about Mira’s passion for art.

I wish we’d learned more about each character, and that the culprit’s backstory was fleshed out more! I found it a little hard to picture each person in my head (apart from Harper, who’s East Asian, poised, and wealthy) because their initial descriptions were paltry, and eventually everyone’s histories are sketched in somewhat… except for the stalker’s. I also have mixed feelings about the letters from the stalker to Mira that are interspersed between chapters; on the one hand, I liked that they injected novelty into the narrative and revealed just how long he’s tracked her. On the other hand, they were so generic??? Very “we are meant to be together I just know it”? I guess I just felt it wasn’t a story I hadn’t heard (many times) before.

Finally, what cemented this as a three-star read for me was the fact that I found the ending somewhat rushed. I had to triple-check I hadn't missed a chapter or two at the conclusion because I felt like there were still plotlines to be revealed and character stories to be tied up; definitely didn't get a sense of closure with this one! 😭

Nonetheless, there were some truly chilling moments (no pun intended)! A burst of unexpectedly unsettling violence in a rest stop parking lot to keep you on your toes. A strange man who keeps showing up along their journey. And of course, the sabotage that seems to be happening under Mira’s nose.

Five Total Strangers started off so strongly! There was so much promise in the beginning. I could feel the chaotic energy in the airport as everyone was worried over all flights being cancelled and then about half way into the road trip the energy died and so did I. It began to drag on and I get there's only so much that can happen in a car but I expected a little more. I kind of had an idea who was behind this but this book does have you speculating literally everyone and anyone you can think of. I thought the author did a great job I just expected more and wish the characters were more dimensional. I didn't feel like we knew much about them. With that being said, it is a quick read even if there are a few slower moments. I think I would check out books by this author in the future.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to netgalley for the advanced copy!

Okay. This book ended up being exhausting. Draining. On and on and on. Very anti-climactic and underwhelming. What started out as such a promising story-line ended up being just-- ridiculous. I was hoping for something similar to No Exit by Taylor Adams but that is what I get for hoping.

So much kept happening but the same time nothing happened. If that makes sense. That is the best way that I can put it. I know one of you out there will get what I am saying. I wish the book would have been more than just... people in a car. Because when that is your plot-line there is only so much these characters can go through and talk about.

Five Total Strangers has a stellar cover, a promising premise, and a ton of really great characters but all in all it fell really flat for me after about 30%. For a YA it had some strong writing and strong "mystery" but it wasn't anything special in my opinion. Nothing really reached out and grabbed me.

This is a book with so many red herrings and false information my head was spinning throughout. 
The characters were ok, I didn’t relate to them as much as I’d hoped though, except perhaps for Mira. 
The author definitely kept me guessing right till the end. 

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this title. This is another great new YA thriller. I enjoyed it and I think that my students will really like it as well! I look forward to adding it to my classroom library.

Mystery novels are a recent guilty pleasure of mine - I'm rarely wowed by them, but I do enjoy devouring them all the same. This YA thriller was one of the same - while I wasn't thrilled by the characters and plot, I couldn't put it down. The premise of the book, girl gets in a car with a bunch of strangers during a snowstorm, was intriguing and captivating, and the letters from Mira's stalker that littered the book were an interesting clue to the identity of her stalker.

The problem was - it was so obvious that the author relied heavily on the red herrings to throw the reader off the scent. In particular, the hitchhiker in the yellow hat was obviously a false clue, as was the identity of one of the protagonist's fellow passengers. Yet at the same time, I was moderately surprised with the big reveal: the stalker's identity, as well as the logistics of their plan, which made next to no sense. How were they so sure that they would be able to travel with Mira? What exactly was their plan, and why did it so often involve putting themself in danger? I understand that this person was motivated by a twisted obsession and therefore not thinking logically, but so many choices and decisions seemed to have been done for no reason except to throw the reader off the trail (the worst decisions, in my opinion.)

On the whole, I would still recommend this book. It's a nice cozy thriller to curl up with by a roaring fire, and it kept my attention well enough. My only wish would be that the ending and the resolution weren't so sudden or ill-thought-out and that the characters' decision-making felt coherent and logical within the limits of their own personalities and situations.

Whoa! This book was literally so full of twists and curves!
I loved it!
It once again showed that what we "think"we know about humanity, reactions, mental stress etc means absolutely nothing in some situations we find ourselves in.
Great job with keeping the this coming.
I'll definitely look for this Author again.

3.5 ⭐
This was a fast paced, easy to read YA thriller. The book had twists and turns that kept you wanting to read.

Mira is on her way home to her mother on Christmas Eve during a snowstorm. Her layover flight is canceled, so she decides to hitch a ride with four total strangers. Only one of them is not exactly a stranger, more like a stalker. The trip turns disastrous almost immediately. Between the weather, missing items, and the eerie feeling Mira keeps getting; this read has enough to keep you reading. The book keeps you guessing and pointing fingers at each of the other characters. I really enjoyed the book, but I felt like the ending was a little disappointing. I wanted more, it seemed rushed. I could have used 15-20 more pages. Once we find out who the villain is, it was over. There were so many unanswered questions. This was very close to a 4/5 star 🌟 book. I still would recommend this one. It was an engaging read.

Unfortunately I could not ge to go this book and put it down after a couple of chapters. I did not like the writing style and I found that I could not get into it. I am so grateful for this opportunity but I cannot offer a review of this book.

Fast-paced is the saving grace for this novel. But let me backtrack a moment. I hate snow. So the idea of being stuck in a car with four other strangers during a snowstorm feels like my idea of hell. And since I find snow to verge more on the creepy than beautiful (after all, notice how bright blood looks in the snow!), I was eager to read this book. The fact that the novel mostly takes place within the confines of the car makes for some masterful claustrophobia. Not to mention the fact that if it weren’t for it being the dead of winter, any of these characters could’ve just taken their changes on walking to the nearest house instead of staying inside a car where they each were becoming suspicious of the other, especially when things start to go missing.

If you love movies along the lines of I Know What You Did Last Summer and the hit TV series YOU, then you will love this fast-paced novel where not only does the protagonist Mira, have to contend with dire weather and a creepy drifter than continually see at all their rest stops, but also one of the four in the car with her has been stalking her for a year. All those things line up to create one hell of a thrill ride.

I didn’t enjoy any of the five characters in the novel and sometimes I was tired of Mira because while yes she was in a car with four strangers, a lot of her assumptions towards one character seemed plain our judgmental. And that she automatically assumes that her stalker is the one person she has been judgmental about during the whole trip is just plain annoying. Sure, the character in question wasn’t the best person out there but he wasn’t the worst either.

I recommend this book if you love YA novels that read like a Blumehouse horror. If they hurry up and turn this book into a movie, Lucy Hale could still pull off playing high school senior, Mira.

Mira needs to get home and decides to take a ride from the person she sat on the plane seat. She shares a ride with 4 other strangers. What's not going to go wrong? Especially in a snow storm.
The writing is intriguing and won me over in just the first couple of pages.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC.

Thoroughly binge-able.

In a mere 24 hours I both started and finished this book. Impressive for a YA thriller, Five Total Strangers captivates from the opening page to the last. You'll be non-stop guessing the culprit amidst a sea of red herring, but you won't be positive until the big reveal. 

Satisfying, forward moving, and absolutely worth the read this winter when you're snuggled up with a mug of hot cocoa and want an amusing escape into a darker world.

Mira needs to get home, and Harper, Josh, Breckin, and Kayla are there to help. Only someone isn’t who they seem to be. Is it the man at the bar? Or perhaps someone even closer to her? When the answer comes, you’ll be just as surprised as Mira. 

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.