Basically, everyone knows how to play hide and seek. One or more people hide and one or more people look for them. To take that concept and turn it into a Hunger Games-esque horror story is what makes this one of my favorite books I’ve read all year.

Our author, Kiersten White, does a great job of making you feel connected with all the characters, despite knowing the entire time that most of them are surely going to die a grisly death. I mean, they’re in a horror novel. It’s kind of a given.

It is hard for me to care about a large cast of characters. Typically, there is at least one character that I have to try to pretend to care about so I don’t feel like a horrible person.

But, guys, I didn’t have to do that with this book. I genuinely felt bad for the characters. Their circumstances, their reasons for going to a sketchy hide and seek tournament in the middle of a deserted area in a creepy town, all of that made them feel like real people. And it’s hard to not feel sad about people who are just trying for a better life being devoured by a faceless monster.

And don’t even get me started on the faceless monster. There’s something about not seeing the monster that makes it one hundred times scarier. Something about the human imagination that creates something absolutely terrifying but absolutely different for each reader.

Books like this remind me why I love being scared. If you also want to feel scared or at least a little more paranoid about the shadows and bumps in the nights, then you should definitely read this book.