Thank you Scribner and NetGalley for the Advanced Digital Copy for my honest review.

Wow, this may be in my top ten of the year. I was so happy to receive this ARC, and it did not disappoint. I have read this author before and enjoyed her work.
I would suggest you picking up this atmospheric thriller for a great beach read. I enjoyed the main protagonist POV and liked the switching back to the before timeline to get a full scope of the story. There were some great twists and turns along the way while following the nine people linked by a tragedy. Just read this, I don't think you will be disappointed. I could not put it down! 5 Stars!

A tragedy on a school trip-vans going off the road during a storm- left only 9 survivors. And then two of those couldn't live with the pain so now there are seven. Seven who meet every year at a beach house in North Carolina. Cassidy didn't plan to come to the latest one but then she got a text message and learned that her friend Ian was gone. Make no mistake- these people aren't really friends but they've bound themselves to each other and now someone is out to get them. This moves back and forth between the accident and the present, narrated by Cassidy, in a fast paced suspenseful way. Cassidy is the most well rounded of the characters and she's the one in for the biggest surprise. Miranda has a good storytelling style, keeps the chapters brief (making it easier to read just one more), and while the underlying plot might be familiar, this has a good twist. Thanks to the publisher for the arc. A good read.

Calling all fans of In My Dreams I Hold A Knife, this one is for you! While I liked imdihak a lot more, this one was still a fun ride.

I think the hardest thing for me was the frequent dialogue and chats. It got to be a bit overwhelming. I also found a good chunk of the book to be confusing. It never reached that “I can’t put this down until I finish this crazy twist” for me.

All in all, if you’re a fan of her previous works you’ll love this one.

What an excellent book. Megan Miranda is an auto read for me and this has to be my favorite in the most recent years. The mystery was interesting, propelling me to read more. The 9 survivors well drawn and I would have read way more about each of them. A universe in their own right. And the setting of the Outer Banks, a childhood summer vacation that kept me coming back to the story. Highly recommend for all mystery lovers and a perfect mystery beach read.

This was exactly what I needed! I finished the queen of crime’s Will Trent series, aka Karin Slaughter, and have been majorly slumping lately. I just couldn’t sit down with anything and get further than a page or two. But when I started Megan Miranda’s upcoming release, I was hooked!
10 years ago, an accident left twelve students dead, and nine survivors were left to live with the guilt of surviving. On the cusp of graduation, these nine students were lucky to be alive and while they all went their separate ways, they get together every year on the anniversary of the accident. At The Shallows, an old cabin in the Outer Banks that the locals call ‘The Ghost House’, the survivors have an unspoken pact to never talk about that night, to never tell anyone their secrets, and to always be there when the others need them. But the number of survivors keeps dropping. After a decade, there are only seven. Chloe was lost to suicide years before, but it’s Ian’s death being so recent has isn’t the only thing keeping everyone on edge.
There are two main viewpoints in this story. The majority is told from Cassidy’s perspective, which is set in present day as she tries to understand what’s happened. We also get flashback chapters to the actual accident, and I really liked the way Miranda did a flashback for each survivor. It gave us a really good view into what happened that night and also constantly made me second guess who I thought was the villain. Sometimes I feel these flashbacks just make the book longer, but every perspective just added to the already suspenseful atmosphere and twisted the story even more. I went through periods of like and disliking just about every character we meet and could not stop reading.
Filled with suspense and clever twists this book was unputdownable. I can normally predict the endings of thrillers, but this one surprised me. I loved how everything wove together in the story and if you’re looking for a great thriller (especially during hurricane season, a rainy day, or while at the beach) this one is the perfect pick!

The Only Survivors comes out April 11, 2023. Huge thank you to Scribner for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.

I can't tell if this was unenjoyable for me because of the book itself or because thrillers have become a significantly less interesting genre recently. A second round purchase for most libraries.

Ten years ago seven seniors experienced a life altering trauma together when the buses they were on wrecked into a river. Each year they all get together to remember the victims. Or maybe the get together to keep tabs on one another…it’s hard to tell these days. Someone seems to have found out the truth about what happened in those heinous hours. It’s a truth the survivors hoped no one would ever know. How far will they go to protect their secrets?

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The premise was great, but there was sooooo much build up that by the time the big twist came, I had already figured out most of it and I was just glad to be done with it. There was a lot of back and forth between present day and back when the wreck happened. I got to the point I just wanted to know the story and it wasn’t happening fast enough for me!

As with all of the author’s books, this one kept me guessing! It reminds me how our last and future are so intricately bound by the people we keep company with.

A decade ago A decade ago, two vans filled with high school seniors on a school service trip crashed into a Tennessee ravine—a tragedy that claimed the lives of multiple classmates and teachers. The nine students who managed to escape the river that night were irrevocably changed. A year later, after one of the survivors dies by suicide on the anniversary of the crash, the rest of them make a pact: to come together each year to commemorate that terrible night.⁣
⁣
To keep one another safe.⁣
To hold one another accountable.⁣
Or both.⁣
⁣
Megan Miranda does it again folks! I was absolutely hypnotized by this novel, I just had to unravel the mystery of it all and getting to see the dynamic of these survivors or should I call them old friends? ⁣
⁣
Anyway I am totally recommending you guys pick this one up because it’s an intense novel that’s gonna keep you guessing I was also pretty shocked by some of the things that happened towards the end!⁣
⁣
Overall grab yourself a copy on April 11th!

Ten years ago, two vans carrying high school students crashed into a Tennessee ravine. Nine of the students survived the crash. Since then, one has died, and one has gone missing. The survivors get together every year to commemorate that terrible night.

The book is told both in the past and in the present. As they gather at the beach home in the outer banks, they tend to stick together yet do their own things at the same time. They are bound by their shared experience, but someone wants to write a tell all and everyone is on edge.

This book was on the slower side and slowly - very slowly readers get to learn more about what happened that fateful night. We do get to learn a little about the survivors and their lives but not enough about most of them to really care. The survivors were not close before the accident, some barely knowing each other. I didn't feel a sense of camaraderie or friendship from them - just a shared experience that they needed to keep in check.

I typically enjoyed Megan Miranda's books and thought this would be a slam dunk for me. But the slow packing mixed with an ending that was not that shocking failed to wow me. Did I guess whodunit? Nope, not even close. I thought I knew and was wrong but even with the reveal, I wasn't blown away.

What did work was the setting and the mood. The beach house on the outer banks with the sandy shore, a storm coming in, and mistrust amongst the group really set the stage.

Although I didn't love this one, I enjoyed it but not as much as I had hoped. I'm still a fan and will gladly read what she writes next.

I've enjoyed Miranda's other novels so was excited to read this one. It centers around a group of friends who were on a school trip years ago that ended in tragedy. Now each year, they gather at the beach for a week to mourn the friends they lost and in a sense, celebrate those still alive. Told in alternating chapters of past and present, the novel is mostly from Cassidy's perspective (at least in the present) as she becomes increasingly confused with unexplained things that are happening now and recalling events from that fateful trip that they are all trying to forget as guilt plagues them for different reasons. It's action-packed and a bit confusing, but it all comes out in the end and I will continue to be a fan of Miranda's books!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Enjoyed this book and found it to be a quick read- I was guessing until the end even though I thought I had figured it out at times!

This is hands down my favorite Megan Miranda book so far.

Even though this is a slow burn, the tension that MM builds is so fantastic that I didn’t want to put it down and simultaneously felt the need to take breaks. But halfway through, I did not put it down because my heart was racing and by the end my stomach hurt (in a good way?) The way MM writes this book and pieces together the “Now” and “Then” is *chefskiss* perfection.

Not only are the characters great, but we get introduced to the different characters in such an interesting way and through different lenses which enhances the story. We think we know them, until we get to see their POV of the past events and then we try and match it up with who they are now. I could really sense how they all felt together and yet so alone.

If you don’t usually love slow burns, I would still give this book a chance because at one point it doesn’t feel slow at all and the story races along. I could feel the desperation of each character (both then and now) and love how both stories come together, even though it makes you feel more and more freaked out.

Megan Miranda had always been one of my fav authors, but IMO her books have gotten better and better with each new one. So if you haven’t tried any of her books or just tried 1, I implore you to give this one a try!!

I thought this was a middle of the road, pretty average thriller. Not great, but not bad.

I think you would like this if you liked: All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda or In My Dreams I Hold A Knife by Ashley Winstead

I liked the initial hook! This group of people, who aren't really friends but are bonded by a past traumatic experience, come back together every year on the anniversary to be together. I also really like the flashbacks, I thought those were the star of the book because they were the actual thrilling and intense parts.
What I didn't like about it though was that it was told backwards, which seems to be a favorite theme of this author. Every few chapters we jump back in time, starting at the END of the traumatic experience, so we don't really know what happened until the very end of the book. I wanted more of that story line, and I wanted it told from start to finish. The story line of the friends 10 years later was uninteresting to me.

I will be posting a review of this book on my instagram closer to Pub Day!

This book left a lot of questions unanswered
For me. I feel like we never got a clear picture of what exactly happened after the accident that everyone was trying to hide. Then the ending was so rushed that it was very vague as to what happened with Grace and Russ.

I really enjoyed books by this author before but this one was just a slow burn for me.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Only Survivors by Megan Miranda was somewhat of a let-down. I was expecting more from this book based on her other novels. Nothing really ever happened. There were many ideas that never really got followed through on and left me with questions. It was also confusing who was who: who survived the crash from high school vs current time. The flashback was pretty typical, but it just wasn't too eventful for exciting. There were many directions this novel could have went in and it just was blah. I'm finding it difficult to even say why it was good or bad because it was just mediocre at best. It could've been developed more, but it was just so-so.

I love anything Megan Miranda writes. Her style reminds me of a modern day Agatha Christie! This book was no exception. Great storyline, good characters and kept me guessing til the end. I couldn't put it down!

This book did not have one character that i liked, or could sympathize with. BUT, that's okay. I don't always like books where I like all the characters. I could see this one being a good book club book. And I library will be getting it, however... I just wasn't the biggest fan. I personally found it to be very predictable, and not much going on.

It was the worst or the best reason for a reunion. Ten years after a high school field trip goes horribly wrong, The Only Survivors get together every year on the event’s anniversary. They are sticking together to avoid the fate of two of their number. Survivor’s guilt and a Final Destination-like feeling of Death coming to claim them has caused two of the survivors to kill themselves. There are only seven of them left.

Now, someone may be stalking their reunion. Podcasters have been contacting many of the survivors. Could it be them looking for some dirt? Or could the feelings of being watched actually be caused by one of their own? There would be a lot of money offered for a true story, not the official story they all had agreed to tell ten long years ago, of what happened the night of the event. The settlement money from the school is starting to run out making money a powerful motive for a tell-all book.

Atmosphere, atmosphere, and more atmosphere! The feeling of dread is pervasive throughout the novel. Breaking up the first-person current day account by Cassidy, one of the survivors, are many flashbacks to the night of the event told in third person by the other survivors. So, there are two mysteries to solve: what happened during the event and what is going on at the reunion. Luckily, I found both to be compellingly told.

The Only Survivors is great for fans of the Final Destination movies as well as anyone looking for a can’t-put-down thriller. 4 stars!

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.