Five Total Strangers

         Imagine flying home for the holidays just to get stuck at the airport on Christmas Eve. because of a blizzard. There's no planes coming or leaving the airport, so you're practically stuck there. Until, a nice woman you met on the flight - Harper - offers you a ride home in her rental car, along with 3 other complete strangers. So now your choices are, be stuck in the airport for Christmas, or chance it in the snow with these strangers and get to spend the holiday with your mother. Mira made the decision to go with Harper and get home for the holiday.. at least that was the hope. Five Total Strangers written by Natalie Richards is the story about what happened once Mira made this decision to go with these four strangers. They were faced with danger every where they went. From getting stuck in the snow and insane multiple car pile-ups, to a potential stalker and definite secrets, this trip was doomed.  Five Total Strangers is a young adult thriller that will keep you on your toes not knowing what will happen next. I rated this book a 3/5 stars. 

         Without knowing, the story started well before the holiday season for Mira. Maybe if she knew what she did by the end of the story she never would have gotten into the car with those four strangers, but she did. There was no way of knowing what would end up happening. In the exposition of Five Total Strangers the main characters and the current situation the protagonist, Mira, is in, are introduced.  It then transitions into the conflict. The beginning is essentially giving background information on how Mira gets into the situation of being stuck at the airport and it also introduces another one of the main characters, Harper. Harper then gives up a potential resolution to the first conflict of being stuck at the airport due to the snow, but that the leads to even more problems. Her solution is to rent a car and drive through the snow storm with Mira and three other people she met at the airport that were in the same situation as them. After the introduction, the main story began, which came along with plenty of conflict. The main conflicts in Five Total Strangers were person vs. nature and person vs. person. The biggest overarching conflict that was seen throughout the entire book was person vs. nature because they were all fighting against the snowy weather of Pittsburgh. The weather was what caused many of their problems and it also led into the person vs person conflict that was seen at the end of the book. The person vs person conflict was because two of the passengers were working together to sabotage the main character, Mira. While the conflict was building more and more little things kept happening to add to it, such as personal items going missing, a mysterious man following them around, and stolen gas leading to a dangerous person vs. person conflict between the group and a few people out in the snowy mess of Pittsburgh. In the end, Mira has some deep realizations about what happened and what could have gone differently. The various plot elements in this book were set up very well, in my opinion. The book flowed nicely between the exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action. 

      The writing of Five Total Strangers was good, given the context of the book. Because of the setting and limited characters in the book it was easy for the writing, at times, to seem pretty bland or boring. But, with knowing what Five Total Strangers was about I would say that the author did a pretty good job with the writing of it. The entire book was written from the first person point of view of the main character, Mira, with other excerpts of writing which were letters from an unknown person including between chapters. I liked how it was written in this sense because if it would have switched the point of views around a lot I feel like the sense of endangerment and anticipation would have been negatively affected. And, I really liked the inclusion of the letters to Mira from the unknown person because that helped build suspense because there was no context given with them until we learned what they were at the end. Each of the chapters, including those with these after them, flowed together really nicely. I read this book in one sitting because of the way it flowed and the build up until the end kept me hooked. The way it was written gave you just enough information and enough new twists to keep you hooked to figure out what ends up happening. All in all, I am satisfied with the way that Five Total Strangers was written because without good writing I would not have enjoyed the book. 

       Overall, I thought that this book was pretty good. There was a lot of anticipation around this book, and while I did think the book was good, I don't think it lived up to the hype around it. There was multiple points in the book where what was happening just seemed repetitive or boring. Of course, with the circumstances there was only so much to be done in the writing, but it was hard to read at a few points. Also, the characters really didn't change that much from the beginning to the end of the book which also is responsible for some parts being boring. Other than those things, I think that Five Total Strangers was an okay book with an interesting plot line. The main thing this book had going for it was the element of surprise and not knowing what was going to happen next. That aspect of the book was what kept me reading it. I would recommend this book to people who like a shorter, but not completely straight to the point mystery book.