Thank you to Net Galley and Random House for the ARC. This was such a thrilling, fast paced read. I really liked all the different POVs. I was constantly trying to piece together the clues and figure out who the murderer was. The characters had complicated relationships with each other, making it seem like there were multiple potential murder suspects. I really like how everything came together in the end, everything tied together really well, and the ending was shocking. I literally zipped through this book, it was so good, and I was so desperate for answers.

I’m a big fan of Donne’s work! Her YA thrillers are so good!
The Bitter End by Alexa Donne is a chilling and intriguing murder mystery.
I just loved this, it was very enthralling and had me glued to my Kindle.
The characters were all so compelling.
There were twists and turns galore that kept me guessing.
This was actually such an interesting and amazingly well-done thriller.
It will definitely keep you reading. An engaging and interesting whodunit.
There were so many times when I was reading that I was on the edge of my seat.
The ending is unpredictable, but even more important than that are the elements to the ending that make it great.

A story full of secrets, lies and betrayal.

Thank You NetGalley and Random House Books for Young Readers for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

thank you to netgalley for the arc! all my opinions are my own.

what a strange, twisty, mildly gory and scary YA novel. i wasn't really sure where it was going to go next. teenagers will love this book.

i am in my 30s, so a lot of the catty and petty behavior was a little lost on me. however, it makes for a great story and great drama.

Loved it! Twisting and turning right until the very end! I still can't trust any of the characters

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my e-ARC of The Bitter End!

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔
🎿 have ever gone on a ski trip
📱 can’t live without your phone
🗣️ ever said something you couldn’t take back
👀 enjoy multiple POVs

• 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐓’𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓

The students of LA’s elite Warner Prep can’t wait for their Senior Excursion—five days of Instagrammable adventure in one of the world’s most exclusive locations. This is not your average field trip.

Which is why eight students can’t believe their bad luck when they end up on a digital detox in an isolated Colorado ski chalet. Their epic trip is panning out to be an epic bore . . . until their classmates start dropping in a series of disturbing deaths. The message is clear: this trip is no accident.

And when a blizzard strikes, secrets are revealed, betrayals are exposed, and survival is at stake in a race to the bitter end.

• 𝐌𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒

This was such a fun and twisty YA thriller with a lot of twists and dark moments. The setup is so good as we are immediately thrown into the story of a bunch of seniors on their way up a Colorado mountain. I enjoyed the different POVs as it made it harder to figure out who the antagonist ultimately was. I had my guesses and ended up wrong, until the final chapter. That had me second guessing myself! This is one where you really need to pay attention to the little details to try and figure it all out as early as possible. Overall, this was a fun, locked door thriller, perfect for older teens!

Eight teens are trapped on a school trip in the Colorado mountains. All with secrets. When students start dying one-by-one, there's only so many suspects.

This was fun and creepy. I think the plot was handled well and the horror parts were horrific. This is the perfect addition to a teen library.

Thank you so much to Random House for Young Readers and Alexa Donne for my copy of this book. The premise was so amazing! There are 8 students from Warner Prep headed for a remote ski cabin for senior excursion. It is supposed to be the trip of their life, but it ends up being a digital detox in an isolated cabin in Colorado. To make matters worse, their classmates start dropping dead, and it seems like they were all brought on this trip for a reason. A blizzard cuts the group off from the outside world, and now the group is trying to survive the night.

Thoughts: The premise of this book is so fun! It was such a fun read and I loved the isolated setting. It felt like a YA And Then There Were None where the characters were all unlikable and had a reason to be there. It was hard to root for any of them, and I found myself not caring what happened to them in the end. It was a classic locked room mystery mixed with a survival story, and I could see it being a fun movie or TV show. The ending was implausible and a bit overdone, but it fit perfectly for a YA story. 3.5 stars!

1.5 rounded up.

There's nothing unique, distinctive, interesting, engaging, or even funny about The Bitter End. It feels like there's no real tension in the story. People die. That's it. We don't feel connected to any of the characters to care about them. I enjoyed the tension. But it wasn't suspenseful or all that engaging. The prose was fine. However, some of the dialogue felt inappropriate for a young adult novel.

"Okay, boomer."

I know this is young adult, but come on.

While the book was nothing special, it flowed nicely. Some of the descriptions brought it to life, and it was clear what was happening from start to finish. While I guessed the killer, some surprises were well incorporated into the narrative.

I would've preferred to have two points of view so that I could connect with and remember at least one character throughout the book. It's not that we don't know who they are—we do. However, their reactions in the story are weak and don't characterize them well. Each death in the story should've developed the characters more while increasing tension and suspense. Something bolder and riskier would've set this book apart.

The Bitter End has strengths, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the Arc!

Terrific book! I am not a thriller reader by any means! I am a romance, rom-com reader all the way. However, I found this author on YouTube and she got me excited to try this book. Wow, am I glad I took this chance! I did not see half the stuff coming that did. And the end, I have no words. I did have to stop reading this a few hours before bed and read something a bit less thriller-y. I am still thinking about the end and trying to wrap my head around the last few pages. Wow, just wow! I highly recommend this book!

I always love a good, locked room thriller, and this YA one is not to be missed! It is so much fun. I ended up listening to this one via an ALC copy and then finished it via an e-arc, and both versions were great. The audiobook narrators really captured the emotions and layers that were present in the characters voices. They did really great and there is a full cast which is always a lot of fun.

The writing is so captivating and engaging. I felt like I was right there at the lodge with the characters over the course of the weekend, though I did not want to be! The pacing was super-fast which was really nice with how captivating the novel was. I finished it over the course of my flight on my way back home from a business trip, it was so good I had to know who did it. Then the twist at the very last minute! What! That did throw me for a little bit of a loop, and I am unsure exactly if I like how it felt for me, or if I would have rather things have stayed a different way. Regardless, I still loved this one and had so much fun with it.

Highly recommend this one for those looking for a pulse pounding locked room suspense novel.

8 rich teenagers from California go to a Colorado ski cabin on a senior excursion. A winter storm traps them there and they are being killed one by one.
This was great story that had me glued to the pages.
Thanks NetGalley and Random House Children’s for this eARC that will be released October 15, 2024!

Unfortunately, I’m just lukewarm about this one. I don’t feel like the characters had distinct voices. Told from 3 years ago and the present, we see these teenagers more often at their worst.

I enjoyed the cold, Colorado setting amidst a snowstorm with no way to leave. It created the perfect environment for things to go awry. So there are some things to enjoy in this one and I encourage others to try it.

Alexa Donne is becoming an auto-read for me--all her books have been so satisfying! She knows how to set up a mystery very well, and the closed setting here works nicely.

I absolutely loved this gripping and addictive YA thriller! This book was utterly unputdownable, and I devoured it in one day. With its multiple POVs, alternating timelines, and fast pace, this book was a page-turner that kept me reading late into the night. The chilling setting and closed-room mystery make it the perfect read for spooky season or curling up with on a cold winter night. It reminded me of a teenage slasher movie: pulse-pounding, entertaining, and never a dull moment. I did not predict the ending, which makes it even more of a winner in my book. Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Books for Young Readers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a lot of fun. Of course the remote location, people start dying trope has been done, but as usual the author infuses it with a lot of mystery and twists. Will definitely be sharing this book for the winter season!

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. I really had fun reading this one. It was a classic who-dun-it, but felt fresh and kept my attention the whole time. There were a lot of characters to juggle so for those that struggle with multi-POV, this would make a fantastic audiobook! A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads. 3.75 stars

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Alexa Donne for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for The Bitter End coming out October 15, 2024. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I’ve read a couple books by this author, so I was so excited to receive this book! I really love YA mystery/thrillers. I’m definitely obsessed with her writing! I think it’s really suspenseful and fun. There were a lot of awesome characters. I love snow survival mixed with slasher stories. It reminded me of a Korean Drama called White Christmas, which I’m obsessed with. I’m definitely really more books by this author!

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys YA survival thrillers!

An unplanned coincidence was I read both this and One by One by Ruth Ware (another ‘rich people trapped in a mountain resort/cabin keep turning up dead’) in the same week, and man, the two experiences couldn’t have been more different. One by One took two days to read because I was hate-reading it just to get to the end. I read The Bitter End in basically two sittings because I couldn’t put it down!

A perfect combination of Horrible Rich Teens, and some more sympathetic, but oddly suspicious ~normal~ teens to keep you on your feet, a very claustrophobic snowed in cabin, and past transgressions finally catching up on these horrible teens.

The only thing that I struggled with is mostly a personal preference; First person POV is a hard sell for me in general, but I usually get into the flow of things within a few chapters and don’t get caught up constantly. But the style of this book is we keep getting flashbacks to a significant party that happened three years earlier, and all of those chapters are in third person POV. So when we come back to the present I found myself tripping over the first person all over again. Also this made me realize I apparently have a bad habit of skimming chapter titles, because I kept losing track of who’s POV we were in.

Other than that, I really loved this! The twist totally got me, in the best way. And the set up of all the little things around the cabin that you totally know are going to be involved in a death somehow, had me like Sickos.jpeg the whole time. Also there is a cat, and nothing bad happens to the cat!

Really enjoyed this one. Once we got to them getting to the “cabin” things started happening pretty rapidly. One thing I didn’t like about this book was all the ways everyone was connected to each other but the reader doesn’t know, that’s one of my least favourite things in books. I also had a hard time remembering whose POV I was in and had to keep going back to see. There was also a lot of unlikeable characters but the mystery and vibes of this one were so good, I was having a hard time guessing the killer until it was revealed. Definitely recommend if you like mysteries where your learning facts with the characters and set in snowy mountain tops

This YA thriller delivers everything you want in a thriller. It’s chilling, macabre, and at times heart-stopping. I enjoyed this modern twist of the classic And Then There Were None. Classmates start to drop like flies as everyone becomes a suspect. I enjoyed how the cold wintery isolation trope cleverly propelled this addictive whodunit. “Appearance should not be mistaken for truth.” Not is all as it seems as secrets are revealed and motives become apparent. I highly recommend this to all who love an entertaining, unpredictable, and clever mystery. Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Children's for my copy. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐