Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

September 1, 2024

In the newest from veteran thriller bestseller Unger (The New Couple in 5B), extreme adventurer Maverick Dillan organizes the ultimate game of hide-and-seek on an island as a social media stunt. When a storm hits and another deadly threat stalks the contestants, the stakes become even higher, and they'll have to battle for survival. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 9, 2024
Unger (The New Couple in 5B) centers this overstuffed action thriller around a dangerous game of hide and seek. Former extreme sports star Maverick Dillan runs a wildly popular production company that specializes in high-profile, high-stakes adventures for thrill seekers. His latest contest—a game of hide and seek with a million-dollar prize—is set to take place on the beautiful Falcão Island, part of a remote archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Adele, a newly single mother, has entered the competition with the encouragement of her two teenage children. Shortly after she arrives on Falcão, a storm rocks the island, and dire warnings from a local mystic strike an ominous tone. Then rumors swirl that a missing contestant has been murdered. Unger overcomplicates her closed-circle setup, introducing podcast transcripts, convoluted backstories for her characters, and a dizzying number of narrators. While some twists satisfy and the pace remains brisk throughout, this doesn’t live up to its potential. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House.

January 1, 2025
Unger's latest (after The New Couple in 5B, 2024) is a fast-paced, atmospheric, locked-room thriller. Adele is social media influencer and single mother of two who enters a reality competition on remote Falcao island in order to win the million-dollar prize. The players engage in an extreme version of hide-and-seek while living in a creepy hotel and battling an impending storm. As the storm grows nearer, the tension increases, and there are hints that something more sinister is at play. The social media stunt eventually turns into a battle for survival. Blurring the lines between reality and spectacle, Unger explores themes of the dangers of social media, the lengths a mother will go to protect her children, and the dark side of reality television. Whom can Adele trust if she wants to win the competition on this island full of lies and deception? It is a fight to the finish when reality television turns into survival horror. Readers of Lucy Foley and a Ruth Ware will surely enjoy this nail-biter.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from January 15, 2025
Engaging characters meet for a game that turns deadly. Adele Crane's life was shattered when her seemingly wonderful husband, Miller, vanished along with millions of dollars embezzled from the tech company he founded. Adele has been struggling to make a living and raise her traumatized kids: fiercely independent Violet and sweet-natured introvert Blake. Always athletic, she's rebuilt her confidence with half-marathons and an online presence as a health influencer. So, it makes sense when Blake suggests she apply for a streaming reality competition for influencers called Extreme Hide and Seek. Contestants are taken to some challenging location, where they hide from the Extreme team. Last one found wins $1 million. That's how Adele finds herself on remote Falc�o Island, the site of Enchantments, a luxury resort built in the 1980s but long abandoned and now about to collapse. It's quickly apparent that the Extreme team itself is on the verge of chaos. Its founder and star, Maverick Dillan, began his career as a kid doing skate stunts for viral videos, but now he heads a hugely successful enterprise--or so it seems. Maverick is approaching middle age, and all his past injuries and current pressures are catching up with him, accelerated by the fact that on the last round of Extreme Hide and Seek, one contestant, a young woman named Chloe Miranda, hid and was never found--something that internet vigilantes won't let him forget. Maverick's girlfriend, no-nonsense Angeline, is holding him and the company together, but it's tough. The team's other three members are his oldest friends, but fractures are appearing. Adele's competitors, a former kids' show host called Wild Cody and a famous young mountain climber named Malinka Niqui, have problems of their own. As they assemble on Falc�o for the contest, they're warned to leave by a mysterious old woman with a paramilitary backup team--and then a huge tropical storm blows in. Weaving together multiple points of view from her believable characters, Unger plunges the reader right into a sense of dread, then skillfully ratchets up the physical terrors of the challenge while revealing one disturbing secret after another. The perils of the real and virtual worlds collide effectively in this relentlessly paced thriller.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.