I enjoy Marshall’s books, and this one was no exception. A show that puts you in the middle of nowhere. Isolated, locked in, and fighting for your survival is the perfect setup for things to go awry.

I figured out who was to blame for certain things very early on, but it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the book. I liked the strong characters, who had been through the worst in their lives before coming here. They worked together to survive.

This was a fun read from start to finish.

I’ve only read (and loved) Kate Alice Marshall’s adult fiction, so it was great to read her YA work and love it just as much.

As someone who doesn’t really read YA novels, this didn’t feel that young to me. Yes the characters are 18-20, but the action and drama that’s going on really made it feel more mature. This reminded me of One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware, in that it’s a “survival game show gone wrong” plot, which apparently I am very into; the abandoned desert mining town was the perfect setting for this story.

When we’re first introduced to all the characters at the beginning, it took me a minute to keep everyone straight, but as the story progressed that became a lot easier. The pace was quick, and there was just enough going on to keep me hooked without feeling overwhelmed by the action. There were some twists I saw coming and some I didn’t, but just the tension of not knowing what was going to happen next made the ones I saw coming just as thrilling.

Pick this one up if you’re in the mood for a quick paced, survivalist thriller!

After saving the lives of many and surviving a traumatic shooting, Mercy is looking to change her life so she signs up for a survival show to win $100,00. Nothing can go wrong…right? Mercy has survived worst.

She decides after being accepted for the show to go, disregarding her sister’s warning about going. Upon arrival, she’s meets the other contests but something just doesn’t seem right. No crew, host, and all the things that make it seem like a competition show.

The competition starts off unsuccessfully so all the contestants are go off to sleep of the first loss and seemingly wake up missing one the contestants. When they all go to searching for her, she ends up dead! Did she do this to herself, did one of the remaining contestants do this, or is this all part of this secret game?

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc!

4.5 Stars! Thank you to Penguin Young Readers Group for the ARC of this book in exchange for a review. All opinions in this review are my own.

Mercy Gray is a hero. She survived a shooting at her local mall, and saved several people, but she still feels the impacts from that day (literally, she has a bullet fragment in her back). Even though she's been hailed a hero, she still feels guilty for that day and spending her sister's savings to cover Mercy's medical costs. So, when she is contacted to be in a Billionaire's survival TV show, she jumps on the chance to compete and be able to repay her sister. When she arrives to compete, she realizes everything is not as it seems, and the contestants are trapped in the gates of where the show takes place, unable to leave. Can they band together to escape? And, will they all make it out alive?

Amazing thriller from Kate Alice Marshall! I was hooked immediately. I really loved Mercy - she was a complex lead character and as the narrator kept me engaged reading this book. Great character development, great story, and great twists!

If I could change one thing about this book, I could have done without the romance subplot. It felt really random, and a bit cliche. I would have loved a young adult book that just had a strong female lead that didn't need a male counterpart to romantically support her.

Overall, GREAT READ! Definitely suggest this one if you enjoy Thrillers - it is young adult, but it really packs a punch!

The very basic premise of this book is a survival reality show, featuring very young adults, gone wrong. People dying, everyone's a suspect, everyone is in danger. It's a compelling read that's easy to sink into. I guessed much of the plot early on, but not everything. I appreciated the commentary on toxic masculinity and male fragility. Overall entertaining summer read! 3.5 stars, rounded up.

Thanks to NetGalley and Viking Books for the early access.

Two years ago, Mercy Gray became a local hero after saving lives during a mall shooting, but she’s still haunted by guilt, pain, and debt from that day. When a billionaire TV host offers her a spot on his new survival reality show, she jumps at the chance to win enough money to help her sister. But once the contestants arrive, they realize something is seriously off. The set is deserted, the gates lock them in, and soon people start dying, turning the show into a deadly fight for survival. I usually stick to this author’s adult thrillers, but this YA one was really good. It dives into the trauma and stories that each contestant carries and how it affects their choices as things get intense. Some parts felt a little over the top, but the ending tied everything together in a satisfying way. Overall, I had a fun time with this one!

Thank you to Viking Books for Young Readers for a gifted copy of this book!

This was a YA thriller that had me hooked pretty quickly with a very interesting premice. A survival reality game show for 8 contestants.. All the contestants have already survived a real life disaster of their own and dealt with the trauma of it. Now they are stuck together in a deserted western town competing for a large sum of money that would help them especially the main character Mercedes Gray, who survived getting shot to save her sister and others in a mall. She is drowning in medical bills that used up her sister’s college fund and Mercedes is determined to win to change their lives.

I just felt flat with this book though and while it held my interest, I also just wasn’t into it that much. I finished it and it was ok but I didn’t love it. It took me almost 2 weeks to finish it, which is slow for me. Maybe it was the YA aspect of it. I did like the character development and interaction.

Thanks to PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group | Viking Books for Young Readers for the gifted copy of this book!

Kate Alice Marshall is one of my favorite thriller authors, and I know she started in the YA sphere, so I wanted to give one of her YA thrillers a try! I'm not generally a YA reader unless it's fantasy, and I think I may stick with that. While this was a fun premise with an FMC I could really get behind, it's hard for me to read about a bunch of teenagers at this point in my life. Spot-on premise, though, with the billionaire-funded survivalist reality TV show!

I never got to read this book. Every time I clicked download it said "Thus file could not be found. And the Netgalley reader would never load.

Firstly, thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with an early galley in exchange for an honest review.

For me, this book doesn't really take off until 42% and that's an awful long time to wait for things to get interesting. I did hate how interchangeable some of the characters seem. Until late in the story, it was very hard to distinguish the male characters. Some had to die to stand out and that did not narrow it down toward the end. I also felt that the tendency toward the middle of the story to make Mercy the ultimate judge of character was a mistake. Not because she should or shouldn't have been; it was simply odd overall. Why should one person be placed in that position?

I can't say I loved the story but I did enjoy the ending.

"We Won't All Survive" is a YA thriller by Kate Alice Marshall. Mercy Gray survived a mall shooting years ago and her care wiped out her sister's college fund, so when the chance to earn a lot of money on a survival reality show comes up, she applies. She arrives at a secluded ghost town with the other participants, but nobody from production is there. They get locked into the town and must use their skills to survive this automated game, but when it turns deadly they find that they are truly on their own. What is going on? A quick-paced mystery thriller that will appeal to fans of "#Murdertrending." A recommended purchase for collections where YA thrillers are popular.

Listen. KAM writes it. I will read it.

I love her YA Horror and have loved her net adult thrillers so taking this back to YA but being a thriller. I ate. I loved it.

What horrible things will billionaires not do?

Kill teens? You’d think that would be off the table. But Damien Dare has set out to make the ultimate survival tv show but turns out it has actual stakes.

Mercedes Gray has been through some shit that left her with extreme hospital bills. She is hoping going on the show and winning will make it so she can pay her sisters college tuition since it was her sisters college fund that got depleted for her hospital bills.

Will she make it through the sirváis show? Will anyone?

Loved.

The ebook was great. I devoured it.

Thanks to netgalley and penguin young reader for an eARC.

Marshall's "We Won't All Survive" had me white-knuckling through pages as its first-person narration plunged me directly into danger. I questioned every character alongside the protagonist, whose trauma and guilt about her sister colored all her judgments. What began as tense quickly twisted into something darker than I expected—I literally found myself hunching my shoulders in anticipation. The themes of stalking and mass violence hit uncomfortably close to today's headlines, sticking with me long after reading. Though not my favorite of Marshall's works, I couldn't put it down. The pacing left me emotionally drained but satisfied, that peculiar exhaustion from surviving something alongside characters who became painfully real. Marshall knows exactly how to make me feel wonderfully unsafe.

Having said that, the way Jess Nahikian’s voice brought that mix of guilt and survival grit to the main character, Mercy Gray, elevated the tension throughout the audiobook.

Special thanks to Penguin Random House Audio, Viking Books, and NetGalley for providing the advance copy, though all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

5⭐️

This had all of the little niche tropes I love so much; reality TV in an isolated location that turns into a life or death situation, influencer adjacent participants with earth shattering secrets, and unhinged characters. The fact that the participants for the show are all survivors of something horrific made this reality show so much more interesting to me. Mercy's guilt over not taking her sister's concerns about the creepy guy seriously as well as her guilt over not saving more people in the mall shooting was palpable and hung over her every action. Mercy kept herself and her sister and so many others safe but it's amazing that she still doesn't feel like she did enough. Even though each character was original there for a competition to win life changing money, when it became obvious that they had been abandoned in the ghost town they all came together to find a way to survive. Each participant had been through their own dangerous situation and used the skills they earned from those situations to survive again.

This book also did a great job of analyzing that you can't always judge a book by it's cover when it comes to meeting new people. Between the 'nice guy' to the shallow influencer to the angry gym bro, the personality a person puts forward is not always who they really are. Mercy and the other participants have assumptions they've made about each other and about Damien Dare and his reality TV production and as the story goes on the participants realized how important it was to look past those assumptions to survive. I also love that this repeatedly pushed back against the 'nice guy' mentality and shows how often those self proclaimed nice guys are the biggest problem.

Thanks Netgalley and Viking Books for Young Readers for providing this ARC to me!

This was a legitimately entertaining read and a solid YA thriller. It was quick-moving, kept me thinking, and the ending made sense. While I do think some of the plot points were a little far-fetched, I overall really enjoyed how this one came together.

This book follows a group of young adults, all 18-20, who show up to compete on a survival reality show for a cash prize. Things quickly go amiss as members of their group start dying. This book features a weirdo billionaire, a lot of traumatic backstories, and keeps you wondering the whole time about who is trustworthy and who isn’t.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Young Readers Group for a free eARC in exchange for my honest review. This one will be available on 28 July 2025.

Who remembers that failed Fox reality show called Utopia? It’s all I could think of whilst reading this book as it’s as if they took that show and turned it on its ear a bit to make it into a thriller.
The show and book have another thing in common— a solid premise that struggles a bit with execution so it fall into the “boring” category at times. Thankfully the book does a better job at staying a float under the skilled pen that Kate Alice Marshall has.

The book initially hooked me but did wane quickly from about 10-40% I unfortunately fell asleep a few times as the story moved very slowly. However, I was able to get reengaged at around 40% and was able to fly through until the end. I honestly think that this would make a fabulous screen adaptation. There definitely was a lot of traumatic baggage that the FMC and supporting characters had in their backstories but it was needed to provide the experience and drive necessary for the survivors to, well, survive!

It was fairly predictable in the Who and what but I enjoyed the unfolding of the Why and How. So in the end while there were troubling aspects it ultimately was a solid thriller. Lastly, this is a YA book. The characters are of age at around 18-20ish so it could be classified at NA, the writing style and prose keeps it forming in the Young Adult genre

It comes out July 29th 2025


I am thankful to have gotten a complimentary eARC from Viking Books for Young Readers through NetGalley to read which gave me the opportunity to voluntarily leave a review.

My general rating system is below. Since I primarily read ARC books I rate according to how I think like minded readers will receive the book. I will round up or down depending on many factors and try not to let my personal wants affect a books ratings.

⭐️ Hated It but pushed through as so don’t DNF ARCs I have received.
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, content issues, poorly edited.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but it had something that stopped me from rounding up. Usually the book may have much more potential than what was given. I recommend it but with reservations.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I Really enjoyed it or think others will. These are solid reads that I definitely would recommend for a variety of reasons.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! These are books that remain rent free in my head for well after unfinished the book. It can be for a variety of reasons from being very well written or just the vibes that captured my mind. These books are also ones I would probably read again.

Thank you NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group | Viking Books for Young Readers.We Won't All Survive is part survival story, part escape room thriller about a group of young adults invited to compete on a new survivalist reality show. Only, once they arrive, it's clear something is wrong - no one is there to greet them, and the gate locks behind them. And then the first body turns up.

Couldn’t put this one down! Enjoyed all the characters and didn’t guess who the killer was until close to the reveal. Very solid book!

Creepy, intense, and completely unputdownable. We Won’t All Survive delivers everything I love in a YA thriller, dark secrets, high stakes, and characters you’re not sure you can trust. Kate Alice Marshall does an amazing job building suspense and atmosphere. I was on edge the whole time, and the ending left me stunned. If you’re into twisty, chilling reads with heart, add this one to your list ASAP.

Holy hell, this book. I don’t even know where to start. This is the kind of story that grabs you by the throat—literally—and doesn’t let go until the last devastating line.

This isn’t just a survival thriller. It’s a character study. A deconstruction of hero complexes, toxic obsession, and what it means to owe your life to someone. Mercy is one of the most layered protagonists I’ve read in ages: haunted, prickly, human. And don’t even get me started on Milo—that reveal?? That spiral?? My skin is still crawling.

There are moments where this book feels like it’s screaming at you:

“I don’t belong to you.”
“We survive together.”
These lines will live rent-free in my head forever.

The supporting cast (Alethea, Harrison, Eli) are all beautifully flawed and real. I loved how Alethea, in particular, went from seeming like a superficial influencer to an absolute MVP. The dynamics between the shifting group alliances and fraying trust felt authentic, keeping the tension sky-high.

And the ending?? It’s cathartic and raw in equal measure. Milo’s death isn’t drawn out for drama—it’s sudden, brutal, and leaves you shaken. The last chapter manages to give us hope without ignoring the trauma these characters carry.