I started this book as I was getting out of a reading slump and it was the perfect fit. It made me think and try to piece together the story, while also keeping me consistently entertained. I fell in love with some of the characters in the first few chapters, and learned to enjoy the stories that each one was telling by the end.

3.5 stars rounded up!

Tell Me What Really Happened is a fast-paced, easy YA read. It follows five...friends? (I hesitate to call them that because none of them really knew each other beyond acquaintanceship. John, Petra, and Abigail all know Maylee, and Nolan is Petra's stepbrother) as they take a last minute camping trip in the local woods with a storied past.

A key theme in this book is motivation. Why do all these characters do what they do? How does this create a domino effect that leads to one of the group disappearing? And how does it affect their reactions to her disappearance?

This book is especially tricky to read as someone in their twenties, because I'm far enough removed from being a teenager to see exactly how self centered and flawed each of these characters can be, but also close enough to my teens to remember being that way. I sure saw more of myself in Petra than I cared to admit. By the end, I just felt bad for all of these characters.

Definitely felt like there were some loose ends or plot holes, especially as certain things that occurred made it seem like they were under the influence of psychotics, not alcohol. I also felt like certain characters didn't receive the balance of personality that others did, mainly Nolan. His only personality trait was his obsession with bigfoots. And none of the characters came off as particularly likeable at most points in the book. This book definitely fell prey to a few stereotypes, but it was still generally well written and an interesting story!

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Chelsea Sedoti for the ARC of Tell Me What Really Happened. Tell Me What Really Happened is out now!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

This was a pretty good mystery! I enjoyed the story line and thought it was well developed. Normally, I have trouble picking out twists and turns and didn't see all the ones in this. It was good! I enjoyed it!

Told in the style of a police interview/transcript, this story follows 5 teenagers who go on a camping trip that goes completely wrong when bad things start happening. I enjoyed this book a lot.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti.

First off, this is one that I highly recommend listening to. It has multiple narrators who all add a ton of emotion and animation to the story.

This is a story about a girl who went missing during a camping trip. She went with four peers from HS, one of them her boyfriend, and after a few drinks, and a tense moments, disappeared. And now through interviews, these four teens have to walk the police through what happened that caused her to disappear. Was she abducted, did she runaway, or did some paranormal creature find her?

This is a fun fast read. I admit that it doesn't stand out from many of it's kind, but like I said, I enjoyed the listen for the great voice acting, so it wasn't a bad way to pass the time. There are plenty of YA thrillers that stand out more though, IMO.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for allowing me to read and review an early copy of this book!

Tell Me What Really Happened revolves around a group of five friends, they go out for a camping trip and only four return from that trip. I really enjoyed this book, it was perfectly paced, it was one of those books that I had a hard time putting down once I started. I loved the unique style of the different POV of each character/witness - I haven’t quite read something written like that and enjoyed it!

It was Maylee’s idea. She invited her boyfriend, John. Then Petra invited herself and her stepbrother along, despite Nolan’s protests. He had no interest in camping or spending time with the selfish, manipulative Maylee. Somehow Abigail got tagged on and there they all were. All driving into the woods, hiking to the river, feeling eyes on them, chasing something (or someone) through the woods to a decrepit but strangely well-stocked cabin. Nolan, whose life has been shaped by a childhood trauma thinks there’s a bigfoot out there. John, who’s watched one too many horror movies is convinced it’s not an animal but a person with ill intent. Petra is confident that the only danger they face is from nature itself and Abigail’s only uncertainty comes from whether she can trust John. And Maylee? She’s having a ball egging the two scaredy-boys on.

Told entirely from compiled police interviews, Tell Us What Really Happened is written from the perspectives (statements) of John, Nolan, Petra, and Abigail. The author begins each chapter with a question the police have asked one or more of the witnesses followed by their responses. The statements overlap, sometimes filling in each other’s gaps, sometimes contradicting one another, sometimes serving almost as a conversation between them. While each change in speaker is headed by their name, the teenagers’ distinct personalities make it easy to recognize who’s talking. Nolan goes on and on about bigfoots; Petra is commanding, abrasive, arrogant and the most likely to misinterpret the others’ reactions; Abigail is awkward and chatty; and John keeps his answers short and always defers to his lawyer.

While the story technically takes place in a police station, you are as much in the woods witnessing the teens running around after dark looking for each other, arguing and getting lost as you are in the interrogation rooms sitting beside Nolan while he drinks his soda and defends bigfeet, watching John confer with his lawyer and Abigail maybe fidgeting with her hands or clothes while she overshares, and hearing Petra fiercely demand the police do something more useful than asking her questions.

Their individual tales are puzzle pieces that fit together to shape the whole picture. And everyone involved played a key role in how the night before unfolded. Even the missing Maylee. There are little mysteries within the big mystery: Why is Abigail even there? How are she and Maylee connected? What happened with John and the police last year? What happened to Nolan as a child? You need to understand these to understand what happened and, more importantly, why.

I love how Sedoti put Tell Us What Really Happened together. It is creative and has so much background that had to be firmly established before even starting the final product we get to read.

The story is fast paced, in part because we’re jumping from one perspective to the next but also because the characters are all so distinct. It’s fun to see the differences in how they perceive the night and each other. Their memories don’t always match up and how they interpret what they see is coloured by their own ideas and experiences. It’s fascinating.

A great thriller/mystery that I couldn’t put it down. Tragic and messy and suspenseful! I highly, highly recommend it.

Thanks to Netgalley and SourceBooks Fire for a copy of Tell Us What Really Happened for an honest review.

Maylee Hayes is the gorgeous center of her high school’s social world. Pretty and popular, she’s been best friends with Petra Whitfield since they were five years old. Petra isn’t quite as well-liked as Maylee – she’s admittedly on the bossy side – but is generally tolerated by their friend circle, including by Maylee’s latest boyfriend. John Massey Jr. is smart and handsome but has a shadow hanging over him from an accident that happened the previous year, right before he and Maylee started dating. Petra doesn’t care though, as long as he treats Maylee right.

When Maylee expresses a desire to go camping in the woods by Salvation Creek, it falls to Petra to organize everything. Petra is no fool: she knows the camping trip is really a way for Maylee and John to have some time alone together. So she invites her brother – or as he prefers to call himself, her stepbrother – to come along, too. Nolan Anderson doesn’t love the idea of camping, but he is obsessed with Bigfoot, and is certain that this trip will give him a chance to try out some of his cool gear and maybe track down the legendary cryptid. They’re both surprised when Maylee brings along another guest, her old friend Abigail Buckley. The super-organized Petra just rolls with it, even as Nolan starts developing a crush on the newcomer.

Awkward teenage shenanigans give way to weirdness soon after the five make camp. Nolan swears that his thermal imaging has spotted something strange in the woods, leading them all on a journey of creepy but not necessarily sinister discoveries. The atmosphere isn’t helped though by Maylee’s constant allusions to the true crime shows and stories she loves. After drunken squabbling by the campfire later on turns into hurt feelings, the teens go to bed, only to wake and discover that Maylee is missing.

Chaos ensues as the remaining four, all with varying degrees of wilderness training, try to decide what to do. Despite the cooler heads’ best efforts, they wind up splitting up in their search. When they finally reconvene in a panic, Nolan tries to tell his sister and the others what he saw that makes him want to not only get out of there immediately but also call in the authorities:

QUOTE
Of course, she immediately freaks the fuck out, all, “Don’t. Don’t you dare start with that trash right now. I will kill you, I swear to God, Nolan, I will <i>kill</i> you.”

So I stop talking. What else am I gonna do?

Even now, probably at this exact moment, Petra’s still telling herself that Maylee is alive out there, taking shelter under a log or something. Saying she’ll be found soon enough. But yeah, it’s not gonna happen. Maylee is dead.

Yeah, I’m sure.
END QUOTE

Despite her refusal to believe Nolan, Petra does cave in and allow them all to drive back to town to get help. Nolan immediately tells the authorities that a monster kidnapped and murdered Maylee. While the police are skeptical of Nolan’s claims, something in the teens’ wild stories gives the cops reason to separate and hold them, with the novel spooling out from their subsequent interview transcripts.

Chelsea Sedoti does an amazing job of keeping each character’s voice distinct and fresh as they share their versions of what happened the night Maylee disappeared. We slowly learn not only about the events that led up to the disappearance, but also about each teenager’s relationship with the missing girl, and their differing viewpoints on what truly occurred and what they should be doing next. Practical, search-and-rescue trained Petra chafes at being stuck in an interrogation room. Unlike her brother, she refuses to believe that Maylee is dead, and wants to go back out to find her. She considers all this testimony a waste of time:

QUOTE
[A]ccording to my dad, eyewitness testimony [is] the worst sort of evidence because people see what they want to see. They miss details and let their brains fill in the gaps. Eventually, it’s impossible to distinguish between real memories or invented ones.

The problem isn’t that witnesses lie to the police. It’s that they lie to <i>themselves.</i>

Anyway, I’m telling you crap you should’ve already learned during your career. But I would’ve also expected you to learn when to cut an interview short because a witness’s skills could be better used elsewhere.
END QUOTE

To the surprise of no one who knows me, I really identify with Petra, but also see many of the other characters in people I know in real life. Which makes it feel that much more personal as the twists and betrayals of this compelling page-turner of a story unfold. Is Maylee dead? Is Bigfoot real? What really happened that night at Salvation Creek? Ms Sedoti answers all these questions with aplomb, while incorporating very contemporary issues of race, sexual identity and ambition into her excellent new Young Adult thriller.

Thank you to the author Chelsea Sedoti, publishers Sourcebooks Fire, and as always NetGalley, for an advance audio copy of TELL ME WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.

Five friends walk into the woods...stop me if you've heard this one. Only four come out. And only one of them knows what the heck cryptozoology is.

TELL ME WHAT REALLY HAPPENED is told in such a creative and clever way. I was hooked-- when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it and getting back to it to read more. The premise is that a girl on a camping trip turns up dead, but the circumstances are completely mysterious because of the unreliability of witness account. Hardly revolutionary, but the plot gets turned up when certain elements are introduced. Like Big Foot. (Yes, that gets as crazy as it sounds.)

I love the form in which this book is written, in overlapping witness interviews obtained by the local police department. It both increases the jarring incongruity of the story, while also backlighting this steamroller of a theme the reader never quite loses sight of. Talking of course about the fact that no one's account of things can be trusted.

This is a really fun read!

Rating: 👣👣👣👣.5 / 5 Big Feet
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: April 11 2023
Read this if you like:
🔪 Murder mysteries
🏕 Camping in the woods
👮 True crime stories
🦄 Cryptozoology

This was full of suspense and hard to put down, my favorite kind of book! This is a YA book, it was a quick read.

Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti

It was all her idea. They would get away from their parents and spend the weekend camping. Down by Salvation Creek, the five of them would make s’mores, steal kisses, share secrets. But sometime around midnight, she vanished. Now the four friends who came back are under suspicion—and they each have a very different story to tell about what happened in the woods.

The clock is ticking. What are they hiding? Who is lying? Dark truths must come to light if their friend is to be found…Told entirely through first-person police interviews, this riveting mystery asks: what really happened that night?

Out now!

4..5⭐️ OK the twists and turns had me reading so fast I was skipping lines! It took a second to get used to how the book was written, interview form, but I loved it! You get everyone's POV in each chapter which is awesome. It's also sad to see them put everything together. It really goes to show how the same situation is different per person. Even though I dragged picking this up, I'm so grateful to have been given this ARC and happy I read it.

Maylee planned a trip to camp with four other "friends' at Salvation Creek, a place known for several disappearances of campers. The trip ends in disaster and Maylee is missing. The story unfolds as the remaining party members are questioned in separate police interviews. The quick pace and style of this book makes it a fast and compelling read.

This was an intriguing novel from the very beginning. I listened to a lot of it in the car, so I didn't see the way the novel was set up. However, I really enjoyed the interrogation between detective and the four kids. It kept me on my toes and I was constantly wanting to know what happened next. This is definitely a novel that my HS students would enjoy reading- I liked the relatability of the characters and the ongoing "what ifs" the novel provided. So happy I was able to read it!

Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti is a great Young Adult story.
I absolutely LOVED the epistolary style of story telling.
The story is told entirely though first-person police interviews.

The story of a missing girl at Salvation Creek on a camping trip.

Really loved the twists and turns!

One interrogation room: four teenage witnesses from a camp trip that goes wrong in Salvation Creek where a brutal crime occurs. This is absolutely exciting, riveting thriller keeping you in your toes!

Over achier- control freak Petra, her nerdy- Big Foot obsessed step brother Nolan, an outcast of school who lives in trailer park Abigail and person of interest- victim’s boyfriend John! The events are told from their POVs. Their friend Maylee who is forced them to have a camping trip on weekend in Salvation Creek is MISSING and probably dead!

So what happened that night?
Five teenagers: Maylee: influencer, magnet of the group who convinces her best friend/ super organizer Petra and Abigail ;( Maylee and she have a complicated relationship) who knows a lot about the wilderness and her boy friend John to attend to the last minute camping! Petra’s conspiracy theorist/ ultra weird step brother Nolan joins to the group because Petra’s parents force him to keep an eye on his stepsister.

Instead of Maylee, none of them are volunteered to participate to this trip but Maylee is great manipulator. During their camping, Nolan brings his special gadget to search for the creatures lurking around. ( at least he insists some dangerous creatures took many lives of innocent campers in the past! ) He finds a cabin in the woods filled with hunting equipment ( lots of sharp knives! ) throughout his search. The other members of the group get creeped out and they return back to their camping site without looking back!

But at the night time things get a little heated between them. The more alcohol, more slurry confessions later, they find out one of them brought a gun to their trip! At the end of the night, a gun shot bursts out and cuts the silence of the woods!

What happened to Maylee! Did one of them kill her? Did Bigfoot tear apart her body?

Four unreliable voices, one murder case, long interrogation process! Just continue to read and enjoy the gripping mystery!

The unusual format might not be for everyone, but I actually really enjoyed it. Even though the interview style made everything a bit more detached from the story, trying to piece together what happened from four unreliable narrators was quite fun.

I did predict one part of the ending but not the full thing how everything happened.

Towards the second half, the story soured on me a little, just because there were some similarities between Mylee's disappearance and another well-known disappearance from the last couple of years. Or, rather, there were some similarities between Mylee's disappearance and the horrible rumors the internet spread about the real case. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but similarities to real victims and real cases makes me uncomfortable, even if in this situation the similarities were in the rumors, rather than the truth.

Salvation Creek has a lot of stories that surround it and once again someone is missing. Author Chelsea Sedati writes a story with characters that I liked and then hated. Five friends go camping and only 4 return --it's a story that has been written before with many twists and turns and this book approached it in a unique style by using the police interview style. It was a very interesting way to format a book and while the ending was what I expected I did enjoy the book enough to stick with it to the end.
Thanks to the publisher, author and Net Galley for an advance reader copy for my honest review.

It was all her idea. They would get away from their parents and spend the weekend camping. Down by Salvation Creek, the five of them would make smores, steal kisses, share secrets.

But sometime around midnight, she vanished.

Now the four friends who came back are under suspicion―and they each have a very different story to tell about what happened in the woods.

The clock is ticking. What are they hiding? Who is lying? Dark truths must come to light if their friend is to be found...

Told entirely through first-person police interviews, this riveting mystery asks: what really happened that night?

A fun mystery for YA thriller fans! I did not realize it was a YA when I first requested it, but it was a fun read. This one is written in a unique way - told by the four teenagers through police interviews. The POV changes multiple times throughout the chapters and you get to see everyone’s side of the story basically all at once. Enjoyable and easy to follow along while you try to guess “whodunit!” Loved the bits of humor thrown in.

A brilliantly written YA, that was both well plotted and fast paced. I enjoyed the layout. It was original and thought provoking...allowing characters to have a voice. It was a dynamic story and ended brilliantly!

Five teens go camping in the woods despite knowing bad things have happened there. Told from the perspective of four of the teens in the form of police interviews, they try to figure out what happened to the fifth friend. A little heavy on the Big Foot angle and the ending felt rushed and not thought out, I did enjoy a fast paced, easy YA read.