This locked room mystery was suspenseful perfection. There's a diverse group of students that have been "randomly" assigned a digital detox week away at a ski lodge. Of course they get snowed it, the electricity goes out, and people start dying. The drama is intense from the first chapter. I read this book while on a hot and sticky beach vacation and it was the perfect book for chills.

Eight teens and their counselor go on their senior trip to a skin cabin in Colorado. With no other visitors, no devices, and no other staff on hand, the nine people settle in for a weekend of cross-country skiing, board games, and binge drinking. It starts to blizzard, forcing them to bunker down. When one of their classmates turns up dead, a fun-filled weekend turns deadly. With no ability to get help, will they survive the weekend? Who is killing them?

Told through alternating points of view, the plot is engaging, well written, and intense. The characters are engaging, well developed, and draw the reader into the story with lots of twists and turns, readers will be guessing who did it up until the very end. Readers who like mystery, thrillers, suspense, and horror will want to pick this one up. Recommended for most high school and public library collections. 4 stars, Gr 9 to 12.

I am a cronic Alexa Donne FAN. I love her YA thrillers, I don't read a lot of thrillers but I never skip Donne's new releases. This one was good but it did feel like there was maybe too much going on. I could not keep these characters and their partners straight. I did guess the killer but I love when that happens. Not as good as Pretty Dead Queens for me but I will still read everything she releases! 3.5 stars

DNF 22%

I felt there were too many POVs to get into the story and the characters weren’t well defined enough. The foreshadowing was incredibly heavy handed and kept me from being invested instead of making me interested in what was coming next. The set up of the relationship between the students and this teacher seemed really unlikely and the way they took advantage of her was just too much for me.

Pretty solid YA Thriller, but I admit that some of the other books by Alexa Donne were better. I was really enjoying the book, thinking it was going to be a modern adaptation of And Then There Were None, but the ending and the reason for the murder spree was (for me) disappointing. I still think it's worth the read though.

This was a really solid mystery! I enjoyed the twists and the final reveal. At times it was hard to "listen" to the teens talking, but it fit the profile of YA.

The Bitter End was a solidly suspenseful, chilling winter mystery! There was enough drama in this friend group to sustain a few novels (perhaps a sequel?) While the gross privilege of these teens was sometimes annoying to my adult mind, it is exactly the kind of dramatic relationship that drives some of the most popular books in my library (and some of the most popular TV series as well.) I loved the creative ways that the characters disappeared and died throughout the book, and until the suspect pool started to become really small, I was still guessing about who the guilty party might be. I appreciated the perspectives offered by the author - choosing one of the popular girls, an outcast within the group, and a non-clique member as narrators helped to round out the perspectives offered. I would definitely read another mystery by Alexa Donne in the future, and I expect that this book will be very popular in my high school library.

I loved a good locked room mystery - especially when it takes place during a storm and everyone is stuck together with no escape. I believe this was written as a YA novel but I thought it read a bit more as a regular thriller which is awesome!

This was young adult but didn’t read like it. This was a fun and fast paced thriller that takes place in the cold alone, my favorite!

This was a solid mystery! It was engaging and had me questioning everyone. The ending fell a little short but I deff still enjoyed the ride this story took me on. I look forward to reading more from this author

I binged through this one! This had all of my favorite elements - who did it, one by one and add in a seasonal storm/isolation. This was an incredible, fast-paced read!

For any fan of locked room mysteries combined with a remote location – this one is for you!

Eight teens on a senior trip at a remote ski chalet in Colorado meet with a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Each teen has beef with at least one of the people there, putting them all at odds. When the first person drops, everyone becomes a suspect!

This entire premise is cat nip to my little kitty heart. It features every trope that I love: remote setting, survival thriller, locked room mystery! I enjoyed every second of guessing who was at the heart of this murder mystery and the authors skill at writing complex characters and their complicated relationships!

I can’t recommend this one enough!

Alexa Donne strikes again with another twisty, mind-bending thriller. A group of unsuspecting teens are forced into a secluded mountain retreat, only to find themselves trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse. With unreliable narrators and a chilling atmosphere, The Bitter End will keep you guessing until the very end. A must-read for fans of suspenseful thrillers.

Note: I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Another thrilling mystery by this author. They have become an auto buy author for mysteries at my library. The teens cannot get enough of these. I already have several that have loved this new one.

Eight teens from elite Werner Prep are headed up a Colorado mountain for a digital detox senior experience: no phones, no Internet, no drama. But first they're trapped in by a ranging storm, and then their pasts come back to haunt them as the bodies start piling up.

There's nothing especially new here: a locked room mystery, stranded with no phones, a killer on the loose. And flashbacks to awful teenagers behaving awfully at an LA influencer party in the waning days of the pandemic. The point of view changes often, I think to help drive the mystery of who's behind the murders, but the characters aren't developed enough to make you especially care - all of them seem like nightmares. And this won't apply to most people but a ridiculous depiction about the world of competitive gymnastics immediately turned me off. This is a popular genre for YA thrillers right now, there are probably better examples.

Once again, Alexa Donne has created a wonderful twisty thriller to keep readres guessing until the last page.

A group of teens have been selected to attend a digital detox retreat in the mountains for their senior excursion. None of them selected this, so it all seems a little weird to them. Suddenly, strange things start to happen and soon, they are snowed in at the cabin. When they wake in the morning, one of them is dead. Is there someone outside hunting them, or is it one of them?

This book with unreliable narrators was a fun mystery that kept me guessing. It was very fast paced and I did not want to put the book. I was anxious to see the resolution and who would make it out alive. I really liked Donne's other books and this was another one I will be recommending.

A group of mostly-privileged teenagers ends up on a digital detox excursion rather than the more glamorous trips the other students get to go on. But it turns out it’s all by design when the teens start dying one by one.

This is my kind of book, a homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. It’s got a real eerie, horror movie sense to it, and is full of suspense. I liked the twist ending as well. I would recommend this book.

The Bitter End by Alexa Donne is a young adult thriller where a winter storm traps eight teens at a remote ski cabin and they start dying. It becomes clear that one of them is the killer. I received a review copy from the publisher on Netgalley. This is a very well written thriller with multiple points of view. It did take me a bit to get a feel for all of the characters and I suspected different people at different times.

The story switches between the current events at the ski lodge and a party several years ago that created drama between everyone. Based on the information that we get about the party early on I was suspecting that someone died at the party and that is the problem. However, the actual reason for the conflict was not what I was expecting. I didn't see who the killer was or what their reasoning form killing their peers. I loved the ending and I feel like this would make a good TV show or movie. It reminded me of the video game Until Dawn but without the supernatural elements.

If The Bitter End sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The whole kids from an elite school getting stranded on a school trip only to discover a murderer in the midst is not a new idea. However, Alexa Donne’s pacing, plot and overall storyline make it stand out amid the crowd.

The Bitter End is told from multiple points of view and two time periods, which is a little confusing to begin with, but makes more sense as the story progresses. In fact, this setup really helps move the narrative forward and helps to keep you guessing all the way until the end.

Now because this story features really rich, entitled teens, you can expect some debauchery — allusions to sex, drug use, drinking, bullying and violence. The book wouldn’t work without it, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re sensitive to any of these things.

The Bitter End feels cinematic in a made-for-tv way. It’s a fast-paced mystery that’s not exactly deep but is enjoyable nonetheless.

Now that autumn has hit the UK and temperatures have dropped (quite suddenly, mind you), I’ve been diving into all sorts of cosy reads to snuggle up with under the blankets. The Bitter End was not one of those reads, and that’s because this book is so chilling and thrilling that I did not have a cosy time AT ALL.

It took me a few chapters to get into The Bitter End because I struggled with being introduced to three point of view characters as well as a large group of friends at once. If you know me or watch my Booktube videos, you’ll know that I am awful with character names, so this is entirely on me. I eventually got it though and by about 20% I was flying through this book and trying to apply my best detective skills to figure out who was killing the characters off – after I finally learnt their names and everything!

My favourite thing about The Bitter End was the setting. As I said above, it was truly chilling, with the group of school…. friends? acquaintances? heading off to an isolated cabin for a wellness retreat that they really didn’t want to go on. I have found that I really enjoy isolated cabin and mountain settings, so I tend to seek out these kinds of books. Alexa Donne did isolated and cold really well, and once night hit in both the book and real life I felt like I was alone with only candlelight to keep me company.

I had a lot of fun trying to figure out who the killer was and what their motive could have been. I enjoyed the outcome a lot, especially because I was starting to get a niggling feeling about someone a few chapters prior and I was laser focused on them after that. It turned out that another character was too! And this meant I was instantly more connected with the other character because they were basically representing me in those moments.

The only downside of this book for me was the lack of emotion with some of the characters, particularly once their “friends” started dying off. These teenagers all coped with it very well, considering there was murder afoot, and I felt like we should have seen more meltdowns or crying from the start, rather than just towards the end of the crisis once everything became too much.