5-Star Book Review: THE ONLY SURVIVORS by Megan Miranda

 

Title: THE ONLY SURVIVORS

Author:  Megan Miranda

Read: June 2023

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!

 

Book Description:

 

A mystery about a group of former classmates who reunite to mark the tenth anniversary of a tragic accident—only to have one of the survivors disappear, casting fear and suspicion on the original tragedy.

My musings:

 

I love Megan Miranda’s books – she is the queen of the atmospheric, character driven slow-burn, and her latest novel was no exception. Here the premise was particularly fascinating: ten years ago, nine teenagers survived a terrible accident on a school trip in which twelve of their classmates died. To mark the anniversary of that tragic day, the survivors meet every year in a remote beach house to support one another and check in on each other, especially since one of them committed suicide a few years ago. This year, another one of their group is absent after having taken a fatal overdose, shaking them to the core. Tension escalates as it becomes obvious that someone is playing mind games with the last survivors remaining. Has someone found out the secret they’ve been hiding all these years?

 

Told through the different POVs of the remaining survivors – Cassidy, Josh, Brody, Hollis, Amaya, Oliver and Grace – Miranda slowly lets the reader in on the reasons this group have been meeting faithfully every year, despite living very separate lives. With her hallmark atmospheric setting – a remote beach house that is being cut off from town by a violent storm hitting the coast – Miranda traps her characters in a confined space and lets tensions escalate and old grudges resurface, with some surprising results.

 

I particularly enjoyed the premise of people tied together by a shared tragedy, with all the guilt, recriminations and trauma that follows such an event. Details of the accident itself are only gradually revealed through each individual survivor’s flashbacks, which provided both foreshadowing as well as an underlying sense of dread and danger as the group realise that they may be in danger. Whilst sometimes multiple POVs only serve to fragment a story, I felt it added to the sense of different reality each survivor held on to, another fascinating aspect of shared trauma. Miranda astutely portrays each one of her damaged characters so well that every chapter held equal interest for me, and I was eager to find out the answers.

 

Summary:

 

A fascinating premise, a claustrophobic atmospheric setting and clever structure of a story full of hidden secrets made THE ONLY SURVIVORS another hit for me as Miranda’s books have done in the past. This is an author who never disappoints, and I can’t wait to see what she will come up with next.