Release Date: December 19, 2017
Publisher: Disney Press (Disney-Hyperion)
Genre: Fiction, Survival, Thriller
Where you can buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
SYNOPSIS:
It was supposed to be epic.
During a late-night poker game, tennis teammates Colin, Ceo, Grahame, and Rhody make a pact to go on a camping trip in Yosemite National Park. And poker vows can’t be broken.
So the first sign that they should ditch the plan is when Rhody backs out. The next is when Ceo replaces him with Ellie, a girl Grahame and Colin have never even heard of. And then there’s the forest fire at their intended campsite.
But instead of bailing, they decide to take the treacherous Snow Creek Falls Trail to the top of Yosemite Valley. From there, the bad decisions really pile up.
A freak storm is threatening snow, their Craigslist tent is a piece of junk, and Grahame is pretty sure there’s a bear on the prowl. On top of that, the guys have some serious baggage (and that’s not including the ridiculously heavy ax that Grahame insisted on packing) and Ellie can’t figure out what their deal is.
And then one of them doesn’t make it back to the tent.
Desperate to survive while piecing together what happened, the remaining hikers must decide who to trust in this riveting, witty, and truly unforgettable psychological thriller that reveals how one small mistake can have chilling consequences.
This book was INTENSE.
From the prologue, there was always this sense of foreboding, like you can kind of guess where things are going to go, but you kind of hope that you’re wrong only to be proven later that you were right. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire duration of this ride, and I enjoyed every second of it.
You have four teens: Ceo, Rhody (who’s not even really a character, to be honest, just a name), Grahame, and Colin. After a game of high-stakes poker one Saturday night, it’s agreed that they all go along with Ceo’s plan of hiking to “Cannabis Cove” in Yosemite. When it comes time to leave, Rhody ends up backing out at the last minute, and that’s really the last we see or hear from him. With one man down, Ceo reaches out to an old “friend” that he met at a theater camp to fill the suddenly vacant space. Her name is Ellie.
I really loved the tension that the author was able to build up here. Grahame and Ceo have a constant battle of egos throughout the whole trip; the former is the #1 tennis player in their school, and the latter is sitting uncomfortably at #2, and he tries to do everything he can to change that, even if it means cheating (which, don’t say that to Ceo’s face, because he hates the ‘C’ word, even though he has no problems accusing it of others).
Grahame does this really poor impersonation of a Jamaican accent, mostly, I think, because it gets under Ceo’s skin, but also because, as Colin observes later on in the story, he’s under some kind of stress. I think it also comes out as a kind of defense mechanism, as well. It could get annoying after awhile, but I think that was the point. Grahame is a difficult character to understand (also observed by Colin). You never know what you’re going to get with him, and as the story progresses, that uncertainty becomes a terrifying thing.
When reading this book, I thought their biggest issue was just going to be an enraged storm, but it turns out, there is so much more on the trail that could have gone wrong. I liked that there was obvious research that went into the description of hiking the backcountry (according to the ‘Acknowledgments’ in the back of the book, the author has a brother who’s an “expert” at it), from the weather’s intensity, the lay of the land. I thought it was really well done.
The only reason I didn’t give this a full 5-stars is because I kind of wanted to know more about Rhody, but also because I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough and go along with Ellie camping with three guys, one of whom she barely even knows, and the only person who knew the general area she’d be was a best friend, not a parent. But all in all, I really enjoyed the ride that the author took me on, and I can’t wait to read more from him in the future.
Advertisements Share this:
