Hide by Kiersten White

A high-stakes hide-and-seek competition turns deadly in this dark supernatural thriller from New York Times bestselling author Kiersten White, perfect for fans of Stephen King and Squid Game.

The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.

The prize: enough money to change everything.

Even though everyone is desperate to win – to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts – Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.

It’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.

But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.

Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

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Hide is another of my Reading Spa purchases, recommend to me after I said that I’d like to read more horror while acknowledging that it’s a genre that I find to be more miss than hit.  Hide was very much a hit with me, however, and I devoured in two sittings having been immediately pulled in by the premise and desperate to know how things would turn out. 

And that premise is relatively simple.  A competition invites 14 strangers to an abandoned amusement park where they must hide between dawn and dusk for seven days.  Anyone caught out during the day – for any reason, including medical emergencies – is eliminated, and at the end of the seven days the winner takes home a $50,000 prize.  They don’t need to hide at night, and can return to their camp after the sun goes down to freshen up, eat, gather supplies etc.  It’s such a brilliant idea, and I couldn’t help but think of where I might hide given such an opportunity.  Having said that, White highlights the eeriness of the abandoned amusement park, and it quickly becomes obvious that there’s more going on than the contestants have been made aware of. 

The main protagonist is Mack – a young woman who is secretive about her past (with good reason) and who is wary of others.  Mack enters the competition with nothing to lose in a very literal sense – everything she owns fits inside one bag with room to spare.  Mack believes that she has an excellent chance at winning the competition because of her background and goes in feeling utterly determined.  Mack is best described as prickly, although her attitude is understandable given what she has been through.  She’s so used to being alone with only herself to take care of and to rely upon that it becomes difficult to accept the help and friendship that she’s offered during the competition when it becomes clear that the contestants need it.  I loved seeing her develop over the course of the novel as she comes to acknowledge and accept her past and what she sees as her own shortcomings, and I loved the way that she gradually lets her guard down, finding friendship in this most unlikely of scenarios.  

Hide is a classic underdog story, and the author describes the 14 contestants – some of whom we learn more about than others – as either aspiring or stalled, with Mack falling into the latter category.  With 14 contestants, it can be quite difficult to create a lasting impression on the reader, but I felt that White did this particularly well in sharing relatively simple anecdotes about each which reveal a lot about their respective personalities.  Some of the 14 are more likeable than others, and I have to admit that there’s real pleasure in seeing some of the egos fall during the process.  Despite her prickly nature, I was fully behind Mack and those that she does eventually let in. 

While the initial set up of the novel is relatively straightforward, it’s obvious from early on (and indeed the blurb says as much) that there’s a little more to it than a game of hide and seek.  I love how the plot develops over the course of what is a relatively short novel (coming in at some 250-ish pages) and I was gripped throughout.  And I think that the development is quite subtle, with the revelations coming slowly to begin with before darker and less subtle hints are provided as the novel progresses until both you and the contestants realise exactly what is at stake in this contest.  There’s so much more I want to say, but I thought that the gradual reveals worked brilliantly throughout the novel.  🤐

Hide is an absolutely fantastic novel with a wonderfully dark horror / thriller vibe to it, but also a wonderful tale of friendship, forgiveness, and acceptance.  Highly recommended if you don’t mind the horror element which I know isn’t for everyone.