Week 24 Review: Find Him Where You Left Him Dead

From Goodreads:

AT DAWN HE'LL BE GONE AND YOU'LL BE HERE FOREVER.

Four years ago, five kids started a game. Not all of them survived.

Now, at the end of their senior year of high school, the survivors—Owen, Madeline, Emerson, and Dax—have reunited for one strange and terrible reason: they've been summoned by the ghost of Ian, the friend they left for dead.

Together they return to the place where their friendship ended with one goal: find Ian and bring him home. So they restart the deadly game they never finished—an innocent card-matching challenge called Meido. A game without instructions.

As soon as they begin, they're dragged out of their reality and into an eerie hellscape of Japanese underworlds, more horrifying than even the darkest folktales that Owen's grandmother told him. There, they meet Shinigami, an old wise woman who explains the rules:

They have one night to complete seven challenges or they'll all be stuck in this world forever.

Once inseparable, the survivors now can't stand each other, but the challenges demand they work together, think quickly, and make sacrifices—blood, clothes, secrets, memories, and worse.

And once again, not everyone will make it out alive.

My Review:
This was such a fantastic read! I've read a few things from Kristen Simmons, but I think this is her first foray into horror, and I had a great time with this story! It reminded me of Jumanji, with the game element that's trying to kill you, and combined with the Japanese underworld worked really well!

It was pretty spooky right off the bat, with weird things happening to these kids, drawing them back together, introducing them to us, and setting up for them to go do this. And that creepiness continued as they started to play the game, there were all sorts of gruesome things that they had to outsmart, outwit, and sacrifice to. 

It was interesting to watch this group of people who had once been very close, have to deal with one other in these circumstances now that they don't get along, mainly from the fallout of when they last played the game. But I was rooting for them to work things out, and win the game! 

The way things ended, oh, man! That was a bittersweet and haunting ending, what it cost them! And that bit with Ian, yeah, the story doesn't feel finished, so I'm really hoping that this becomes a series so things will be resolved, one way or another! 

Loved reading this book, and I hope we get more, there's still things I want dealt with! 

Author: Kristen Simmons
Read: June 11th, 2023
Source: NetGalley  
Reason Why: Love her writing, and it's a SAC 2023 Book and a WoW Book! 
Publisher: Tor Teen
Expected Publication: September 26th 2023

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars