The Only Survivors- Book Review

A decade ago, two vans filled with high school seniors on a school service trip crashed into a Tennessee ravine—a tragedy that claimed the lives of multiple classmates and teachers. The nine students who managed to escape the river that night were irrevocably changed. A year later, after one of the survivors dies by suicide on the anniversary of the crash, the rest of them make a pact: to come together each year to commemorate that terrible night.

To keep one another safe.
To hold one another accountable.
Or both.

Their annual meeting place, a house on the Outer Banks, has long been a refuge. But by the tenth anniversary, Cassidy Bent has worked to distance herself from the tragedy and from the other survivors. She’s changed her mobile number. She’s blocked the others’ email addresses. This year, she is determined to finally break ties once and for all. But on the day of the reunion, she receives a text with an obituary attached: another survivor is gone. Now they are seven—and Cassidy finds herself hurling back toward the group, wild with grief—and suspicion.

Almost immediately, something feels off this year. Cassidy is the first to notice when Amaya, the annual organizer, slips away, overwhelmed. This wouldn’t raise alarm except for the impending storm. Suddenly, they’re facing the threat of closed roads and surging waters…again. Then Amaya stops responding to her phone. After all they’ve been through, she wouldn’t willfully make them worry. Would she?

And—as they promised long ago—each survivor will do whatever he or she can do to save one another. Won’t they?

The story follows a woman named Cassidy. Every year, Cassidy and her high school classmates get together in Outerbank and live in the house called The Shallows–when they were seniors in high school, an accident took away most of their classmates except Cassidy and six more students. Now they get together to remember those victims every year. However, Cassidy didn’t want to get together anymore. But she receives a message from someone in the group, saying that one of her closest friends and survivors, Ian was dead. Cassidy has no choice but to join her friends at the Shallows. But as she goes there, she realizes that everyone seem to be hiding a secret, and even Cassidy seem to be hiding secrets as well.

This was a slow burn thriller. Now really fast-paced and not much of twists and turns you would expect in a psychological thriller. Cassidy tells the whole story while there are snippets on the day of the accident as to what really happened. However, the ending got really interesting and the ending was actually unexpected. This is the second book I have read from this author and I would give this book 3.5 stars as a whole.