Let me cut to the chase: Holly Jackson knows how to build a siege scenario.
I was driving back from a client meeting in Houston—three hours of I-10 stretching into nothing—when the RV in this book broke down. Perfect timing. Six kids trapped in a tin can in the middle of nowhere, a sniper with a rifle picking them off if they try to leave. It's a pressure cooker setup, and Jackson executes it with the precision of a well-planned ambush.
The Tactical Situation
Here's what works: the clock. Eight hours until dawn. No cell service. No backup coming. One shooter, position unknown, with clear sight lines on every exit point. I've briefed extraction scenarios with worse odds, but not by much. Jackson keeps the tension ratcheted tight by forcing these kids to do what any good unit would do under fire—figure out who the target is and why.
The mystery unfolds through forced confessions. The sniper's not shooting to kill everyone. He wants information. So the group has to tear each other apart, secret by secret, to figure out which one of them painted a target on the whole RV. Red Kenny, our protagonist, is the one asking the hard questions. She's got good instincts—suspicious of everyone, methodical in her interrogation. The kind of soldier I'd want on my team.
The pacing is relentless. No filler. Every chapter either reveals something new or puts someone in the crosshairs. At 10 and a half hours, it never drags. Mission accomplished on the thriller front.
Galvin's Performance: The Honest Debrief
She nails Red. The main character comes through clear—scared but thinking, panicked but functional. Galvin captures that specific terror of someone processing fear in real-time while trying to stay useful. I believed Red was a seventeen-year-old girl who'd never been shot at before but wasn't going to freeze up.
But here's the problem. Galvin reads with this raised, urgent pitch throughout—and I mean throughout. Ten hours of sustained intensity. By hour six, I was adjusting my volume more than I was adjusting my speed. Some of the side characters come across whiny, and there's a thick Pittsburgh accent that bleeds into everyone. In a confined-space thriller with six distinct characters, you need cleaner differentiation.
It didn't ruin the book. But it did make certain stretches feel like being yelled at. Ranger actually left the room during one particularly heated argument scene. (He's got sensitive ears. Also opinions.)
The Intel That Holds Up
What Jackson does well is the information warfare. Every character has something to hide. The reveals are layered—you think you've figured out the target, then new intel drops and you're recalculating. It's the kind of mystery where you're actively working alongside the protagonist, which is exactly what I want from a thriller.
The confined setting works because Jackson commits to it. No cheating. No cavalry arrives. No magical cell service restoration. These kids have to solve the problem with what they've got—which is basically each other and whatever's in the RV. The constraints force creativity, and the solutions feel earned rather than convenient.
I will say—and this is minor—some of the character decisions felt young. Which, fair enough, they are young. But there were moments where I wanted to reach through the speakers and establish some basic tactical discipline. Cover your sectors. Stop standing in front of windows. Basic stuff. But that's me bringing twenty-five years of training to a YA novel, which isn't exactly fair.
Mission Assessment
This is a solid thriller that does exactly what it promises. Trapped. Hunted. Running out of time. Jackson delivers the goods on tension and mystery. The audiobook experience is compromised somewhat by narration that runs hot for ten straight hours—you might want to bump down to 1.0x speed to give yourself some breathing room, which is the opposite of my usual advice.
Who should listen: Anyone who wants a locked-room thriller with actual stakes and a mystery that plays fair. Great for road trips—the claustrophobic RV setting translates well to car audio. Who should skip: If sustained high-intensity narration gives you a headache, or you need your YA characters to make tactically sound decisions, adjust expectations accordingly.
I finished the last hour parked in my driveway because I wasn't walking away without knowing who survived. That same high-stakes urgency drove me through 5th Horseman, though that one had me second-guessing every character's loyalty instead of their survival odds.
Not Jackson's best work—her Good Girl's Guide to Murder series has tighter narration—but as a standalone siege thriller, it accomplishes the mission. Just maybe keep the volume at 60%.
