Hide by Kiersten White

The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don't get caught.

The prize: enough money to change everything.

Even though everyone is desperate to win--to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts--Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she's an expert at that.

It's the reason she's alive, and her family isn't.

But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.

Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

---

This is being advertised as an adult book. Having read it, I didn't get that vibe at all; the main characters are all teens, there's not as much depth as I'd expect from an adult read, and there was no point as I was reading where I thought it was anything other than a teenage read. In fact, this wouldn't be that out of place in the Point Horror series, if Mack's history was a little more glossed over. This isn't meant as a complaint; it's just a fact. 

As always in this type of book, several of the characters are gone before we really get to know them. I found that in some scenes, the POV flipped rapidly without warning from one character to another, which was a little dizzying. That might be a formatting issue in my proof, though, it's possible that they'll all be separated out in the actual book.

I liked Mack, but I felt like her background didn't actually have a point apart from making her aloof. There was no reason it had to be that particular background; the irony was nice, but it didn't add anything else. That's just my opinion, though. I have no particular feelings about Ava, I liked LeGrande and Ava.  The random bits of historical backstory annoyed me. We got everything we needed from the books the various characters read, we didn't need to know about the internal struggles of the families, it didn't add anything. 

The setting was great, really well described and a very clever update of a very old myth. Kiersten definitely has the touch there. 

One to try if you like atmospheric horror. Just be aware that it's pretty teenager-y.

Hide publishes on the 24th May, 2022. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.