The actual horror component of this book, the dark purpose of the amusement park and the game of hide and seek, was really interesting. While I don’t think this writing style will work for everyone, I enjoyed it. There were a few instances where a character came into an item that provided lots of information to them and to the reader, and while it did feel exposition-heavy in those instances, it also felt necessary for either the reader to understand the stakes that the characters didn’t yet realize, or to catch the characters up on what the reader had come to suspect. I enjoyed White’s writing style, with third-person narration that occasionally jumped between characters and revealed pieces of the mystery that kept me tense and anxious for the entire length of the story.

The setting is immersive and richly described, and the story moves quickly (the book is only 250 pages). While many of the characters explored in this book are imperfect, with quite a few being antagonists or even villains, seeing into their minds gave the story a level of emotional depth that I appreciated. We learn their motivations, why they are the way that they are, and what led them to enter this competition. Mack is our primary protagonist, but many of the competitors get developed as we spend time in their minds during the game. Once again, I’m unfamiliar with the conventions of the genre, so I can’t speak to what has or hasn’t been done before, but I found this book excelled as a character study.

This book was a fun, spooky ride, and while I’ll admit I was never genuinely scared, I was on the edge of my seat and glued to the page. Several times, I thought I knew where the story was going, but I was almost always wrong, or at least missing one crucial piece of information. How could I resist a horror novel set in an abandoned amusement park? While I was nervous for the first couple of pages, I have to say I loved this book! I connected quickly with several of the characters and was constantly guessing and trying to put the puzzle pieces together. I consider myself a bit of a coward, and I wanted to push myself outside of my comfort zone with this book. I’ll preface this review by saying that this is my first experience reading horror. She’s an expert at hiding, and this time her life doesn’t depend on it‒or does it? For Mack, this offer is life-changing, and even though entering this game brings her back to the darkest time of her life, she’s willing to do whatever she has to win.

Hide, by Kiersten White, is an adult horror novel in which fourteen people are given the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to compete in a high-stakes game of hide and go seek in an abandoned amusement park with a $50,000 prize. Content warning: suicide, blood, death, violence, homophobia, racism, classism, child abuse, gun violence, grief, confinement, death of an animal, injury detail

Hide novel kiersten white