The Search Party by Hannah Richell is an absolute delight. When I read the description and saw it was about a glamping trip, I was a tad bit skeptical but ended up loving it!

The Prologue absolutely sucks you right in and it has twists and turns all over the place after that. The Search Party is about a group of college friends who head out to the country for a preview of their friends’ new glamping resort before it opens to the public.

I normally struggle with books that have a lot of characters. I read so quickly it gets confusing fast - but this one was actually easy to keep up with.

Thank you so much to Hannah Richell and NetGalley for sending me an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

About three chapters into The Search Party, I knew I was going to LOVE this book! After a reading spell where I wasn't that excited to go back to the book I was currently reading, with The Search Party, I sped through it in two day!

What did I love about the book?
1. A simple thiing, but because there were four families and many characters in this book, the author started with a little character listing page. So helpful, those first few chapters, until you get all the characters separated in your head!
2. But once I got into the book, the characters quickly became distinct to me. It's quite a challenge to juggle so many characters and have them all stand out with their distinct characteristics. What is even more of a writing feat, most of these were very flawed people, or at least very human. The author managed to show some of the characters in an un
flattering light, yet we still cared about them. Some times authors can go too far, and make everyone in the book despicable, at which point I simply don't care.
3. Each chapter was written in a different characters POV. Not all the characters, especially some of the children, had their own chapters. But there were quite a few, and it was very well handled. I didn't find it at all confusing, switching into these different character's heads.
4. It was a fast-paced, gripping story. The time line did switch back and forth a little, but this only made for tantalizing hints about what was coming.
5. The story had a satisfying conclusion.

What I didn't like?
I can't think of a thing!

I highly recommend this read for those wishing for a book to immerse themselves in. Just be sure you have some spare time to read, if like me, you're not able to put it down!

Thanks to NetGalley, Atria Books, and author Hannah Richell for allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC.

The Search Party' by Hannah Richell kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. Richell masterfully weaves together suspense, emotion, and intricate characters in this gripping thriller. It’s no easy feat to write a mystery with multiple POV accounts that still manages to keep suspense high and questions unanswered until the very end. A must-read for anyone who loves a page-turner. I couldn't put it down! Five stars without a doubt.

Thanks to Netgalley & the publishers for the ARC. Well, it appears that I am in the minority of reviewers for this book or they're just fluffing their ratings to stay on publishers good side. Well, that's too boring for me, so you get what you get. This book is really slow. When I mean slow, the plot if able to partake in a foot race, would lose against a sloth. I was engaged for a few hundred pages, but then nothing continued to happen. When something did happen it was so anti-climactic that I had to go back and see if I was missing some detail that it made it not be such a... let down. This is one book that really just didn't resonate at all for me. And I will never judge a whodunit style mystery by it's ending or the reasoning behind the crime but this one was up there in dumb reasons to commit a murder & then write a book about it.

The best kind of thriller. This would be a perfect vacation read! I can’t wait to read more by this author.

This book had many, many characters. I liked the map and the chart of characters it provided in the beginning

Because without that I would have been so lost.

This was a quick, satisfying thriller read, especially if you like the "alone in a remote location" trope. I thought it was a little too obvious with the leaving what happens to characters unknown mysteriously, but overall it was an enjoyable read.

A missing person.
A dead body.
You think you have the mystery figured out, but you’re wrong.

Max and Annie Kingsley left their life in London to open a glamping site in the wilderness of Cornwall. Before their grand opening, they decide to invite their university friends and their families for a weekend glamping trial run before opening it to the public.

When their friends arrive, it’s a happy reunion filled with old memories, but tensions rise when Max and Annie’s son, Kip, attacks a child over a marshmallow. Kip has behavioral issues that Max and Annie have been working on, but their friends don’t understand his outbursts.

An unexpected storm has blown in and tensions rise when one of them disappears. The last person to see them alive was Kip and he’s not talking. Phone lines are down and there’s no one around for miles which prompts the adults to form a search party. Secrets spill out, twists are revealed, and a dead body is found.

This book was told from eight POV’s which wasn’t as confusing as I thought it would be. The author includes a list of families at the beginning of the book, but the characters were easy for me to figure out. This was an addicting locked room thriller where characters tell detectives their side of the story inside the police station and in the hospital.

Someone is in a coma.
Someone is dead.
What happened?

Max and Annie have moved from London to start a glamping retreat, and invite their oldest friends and their families to come join them for a weekend. But a series of events unfolds that leads to fractured friendships, broken relationships, and a whole lot of danger.

I really enjoyed this book. The technique of jumping backwards and forwards in time really upped the suspense and kept me guessing. The characters feel really real, as do the relationships among the characters. The setting really fits the plot. I would recommend this book.

This was a solid locked room-esque thriller. I definitely got confused the first third with all the characters and their relationships to each other, but as the story goes on I had a better handle. I think some things with the flash backs/flash forwards could have been done differently to create more atmosphere, mystery, and suspense. While the setting was an isolated glamping story, I didn't feel as much of that atmosphere as I would have liked. I like reading stories like this and really feeling the setting, which adds to the unease of the mystery. I think some characters and their relationships could have been fleshed out more, but I liked the reveals at the end and I will definitely see what this author does next.

Once I started reading, I didn't want to stop, which is exactly what I want in a thriller. There are some unlikeable people and some likeable ones, and enough action and suspense to keep me entertained for hours.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

This is a brilliant mystery! With college friends now in their 40s all getting together to celebrate one family‘s new venture in Glamping each family arrives optimistic but when they leave it will be a totally different emotion. Annie and Max with their adopted son Kip recently moved to the country for the benefit of their sun Kip and to have a more relaxed lifestyle. They adopted Kip at the age of six and he suffers from spontaneous mutism due to anxiety and other disorders but they love him like he was their own son. They’re opening an environmentally friendly Glamping campground and have invited their college friends before the grand opening. This includes Dominic a Famous judge on a nation wide talent show call star search his much younger wife and his three kids 17-year-old scarlet teenage Felix and the only child from his latest marriage phoebe. Then there’s Jim and Susie the hippies of the group with their three children river willow in Jupiter and last but not least is Keira her boyfriend Fred and her new six-month-old baby Ausha. Josh is also there he is in his early 20s and is the handyman for the campground and a big help to Max and Annie. When everyone starts arriving they keep thinking about the last time they saw each other at Kiras 40th birthday party and the “event“ that happened that night. After dinner they decide to let the kids roast marshmallows with wooden skewers that 12 year old Kip made himself all the kids received two big marshmallows when phoebes fell into the fire she thought it no big deal to steal one of kips and despite the fact two adults saw her do it no one said anything and when Kip to look for his last marshmallow an incident occurred. Needless to say Dominic overreacted and physically assaulted 12 year old Kip and called him ugly names. Needless to say this put a damper on the party and The next day Max decides to let bygones be bygones for the betterment of the group he knows his son Kip isn’t a normal 12 year old due to the outrageous abuse he suffered before going into foster care but because he and Annie love him he would expect his friends to do the same. 17-year-old Scarlet isn’t happy she stuck in the middle of nowhere with no cell service and despite trying to flirt with Josh she found no takers that didn’t stop her from getting drunk and waking up with a hangover. After breakfast all the women except for Tonya and Scarlet goat to the farm house to drink wine and make dessert while all of the men were supposed to tend to the children. It isn’t long before Phoebe interrupts her dad Dominic who was in the middle of asking Jim about the $50,000 loan that Jim’s wife knows nothing about she wants to know if she can go with all the kids to play on kips tree swing. Dom knows Tonya would never let her go but he employs Felix and river to look after her and allows her to leave the campground to go to the tree swing, After all Tonya and Scarlet went to town to go shopping. When he resumes his conversation with Jim, Jim insinuates he knows something that Dom may not want Tonya to know about and essentially blackmails Dom into letting talk about the loan go. It Has to do with Keira‘s birthday party and when Dom repeats what Jim said he didn’t know Kira‘s boyfriend Fred was standing right behind him. It isn’t long before the weather turns stormy and when the kids return they’re not all together it seems Kip and Phoebe are missing. They do a quick search but can’t find them anywhere and when Tonya returns from town she is devastated to learn not only is Phoebe missing but she was with Kip but right when they’re about to call the local police they see movement in the distance. Unfortunately it is only chip returning with Phoebe‘s brown bear under his shirt and blood on his hands once again Dom physically attacks the boy and causes him anxiety and spontaneous mutation it’s so chip cannot tell them where she is. OK I’m going to stop this long with you and say this was a great awesome phenomenal book and although there were a few times I thought certain things could’ve been prevented overall it was an awesome read if I could’ve given it 4.5 I would have there were a few things like when Scarlet thought Fred was a pedo prestige ring at her and her G string bikini yet she thought it was A-OK to take secret photos of Josh but that really was a double standard and a minor point and not important to the story it just irritated me the double standard between the genders. I really enjoyed Hannah Rachel pointed out how Tonya felt like an outsider yet never wanted to go with the flow and even through the narrative you could feel her well with me mentality totally didn’t like her but I did feel bad for her this book is toll to multiple POV‘s and multiple timelines but it wasn’t hard to keep it straight I found this book so interesting and I didn’t want to put it down this is a book you will forgo chores just to get to the next chapter it really is a great read and one I highly recommend. Once again I don’t think I would call Beth a lot room mystery especially when they’re at a campground with multiple public walkways and beaches surrounding them but either way I get the point and totally love that no matter what you call it. I want to thank atria books and NetGalley for my free arc copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review sorry for making it so long.

The Search Party was fine. A bunch of college classmates stay in touch for years. They decide to all go "glamping" with their families. Some people are not so happy to go, but they all go. Things go terribly wrong and the reader is left to slowly relive the previous days. There were a lot of characters and sometimes they were not different enough to tell the difference. While I should have been engrossed in the plot, the constant changing of POV without a really clear view of each of the characters kept that from happening.

The Search Party has all my favorite things - a locked-room vibe, a horrible storm, no access to outside help, and everyone keeping secrets. The pacing really worked for me. While there aren't constant twists and reveals, they're interspersed throughout in a way that totally captured my attention and kept me reading past my bedtime. With a few artfully-placed red herrings, I thought I had the true villain figured out, but I was wrong, and I loved it!

4.5 stars rounded up!

This book was so good! It started with a twist and then some slow buildup of laying out the characters. But then comes the drama and all the twists! I enjoyed the style of writing and the going back and forth between timelines and POVs. It was an all around good thriller that I will be recommending!

I loved this book. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all, and I loved it even more for that. When I saw the premise of a bunch of old college buddies reuniting, I thought I had it all figured out from the get go, and boy was I wrong. Add in children, and a storm, and old drama and conflict, and you have yourself this thrilling new novel by @hannahrichell !

4.5 rounded up to 5!

I chose this book because the premise reminded me of the movie “The Big Chill,” in which a group of college friends gather for a reunion. The Search Party filled the bill and added tense and dramatic scenes. Every character has secrets, and each one is exposed when events turned deadly.

The setting is a weekend glamping trip, and the couples bring their children along. A terrible storm rolls in, and the drama heightens. This story is a thriller that digs deep into the complex bonds that exist among these friends, their spouses, their exes, and their children. The tension is palpable, heightened by ages-old resentments and false expectations.

The author reveals the mystery through multiple points of view and police interrogation narratives. The writing is tight and descriptive. This book has it all: family drama, deception, lies, infidelity, relationship issues, parenthood, revenge, unbridled anger, and murder.

Read this one with the lights on.

Wow. So, plot wise, this is fine. It’s not groundbreaking and I called the entire mystery and series of twists like 25% of the way in. (To be fair, I read a ton of books like this so it’s very hard for me to be surprised.) And in the first half, some of the characters whose narration/POV we follow are unbearably awful.

HOWEVER, at the conclusion, this is just exceptionally well done. The writing is solid, the characters are a bit archetypal but work, and the pacing is spot on. You have two timelines, which I know a lot of people don’t like, but it’s done so well. At one point, I found myself thinking, “yes, this is how you pull two timelines together without being info dumpy or jarring.”

The biggest thing about this that sets it apart, though, is the heart. It had a lot of opportunity to stray into melodrama or to go silly. And normally, I do not care at all about feelings about parenting and family. But I found myself truly empathizing with the characters here (except one, but he’s just too much for me - and he still felt very authentic).

And as much as I enjoyed all that and this read quickly, I was still leaning toward a soft 5 (more of a 4.5) but the ending made it a solid 5. So many authors introduce kids with issues and trauma plot points to make their mystery/thriller work, but the vast majority feel extremely exploitative and, to be blunt, ignorant. The way this book addressed trauma was very real. And the ending, while maybe a bit more happy than I usually like, was such a good way to comment on trauma without making it easy to resolve.

This was excellent and, yes, when it comes to books dealing with any kind of trauma plot, I can swing very strongly one way or another. So that may have been part of my sheer satisfaction here (especially given I’ve read a handful recently that were appalling bad at handing the topic). But either way, I’m going to look for more by this author and I was very satisfied by this book.

Note, though: there’s no actual search party. The searching is done off-camera between the timelines so the title is weird.

This just wasn't for me. I couldn't get lost in it, although I tried.
I just didn't feel it. It is interesting and I love the setting though.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a book! This had me hooked from the start. The intrigue of the events and how we got there had me interested in seeing how everything played out. This was my first book by this author and I would definitely be interested in checking out future books or backlist books. I personally really enjoy the dual timeline books. The cast of characters had me a little overwhelmed at first with who was who, but the reference in the beginning of the book was helpful. There were certainly some unlikeable characters, but I will say some of the characters were not very fleshed out and surface level.