Each teen comes from a unique and compellingly drawn background, expressed with impressive effectiveness given how quickly the plot moves. Other team members quickly locate the man who is the target of their search, but the three teens find something else: the body of a recently dead girl. I may have missed these answers in the crammed last chapter.In a fast-moving and well-constructed mystery, three teen volunteer members of a search-and-rescue team track a serial killer targeting homeless teen girls in Portland, Oregon.Īn experienced SAR member is supposed to accompany every search party, but an error lands new volunteers Ruby, Nick and Alexis alone together on their first call. I was left with a lot of questions that weren’t answered, like where the rescue team that was supposed to meet them in the bridge was, why they never spotted any helicopters, why we never really got closure with Natalia’s loss of her brother. I never got that moment of the characters realising that they were rescued and I’m mad about it. The next chapter is set one year later, cramming the details about them getting out in a quick paragraph and closing the story. What decided the one star rating for me was that as short as this book is, the penultimate chapter had Natalia in a perilous situation, they hadn’t got close to finding their way out yet and just before she was about to be saved or lost, the chapter and story ended. There’s no scenes of them bonding, it’s just on to the next emergency. I’m not sure what their relationship was before the hike, how they met or if it was even supposed to be a date. There is supposed to be some element of romance between Natalia and Wyatt, but I had trouble remembering he was even there most of the time.
So they would walk a little bit, an event would happen – dislocated shoulder, panic attack, some bears, someone fell face first into bees? – and there would be pages and pages going into detail of all the medical knowledge this one 17 year old had, and then off again until the next event. The story is very formulaic, designed to show off the author’s first aid training which doesn’t translate well to a 17 year old that did a Red Cross course one time.
Unfortunately, it was so poorly written I was left wondering if I read a first draft. I want to get into more books featuring People Trapped In Situations this year, so this story of a girl trapped in a wildfire with strangers, trying to battle their way out, sounded like it was going to be an easy 5 star read for me.
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