Tag: hide

Hide is a horror novel about a game of hide and seek with very high stakes, set in an abandoned amusement park. Mack has nothing, so when she has the chance to take part in a week-long game of hide and seek in an abandoned theme park to win prize money, she takes that opportunity. Well, that, and she has a history of hiding. As she meets her fellow competitors, she knows she’s not there to make friends, but when it seems less of a fun competition and more of a fight for survival, Mack might have to work with other people if she wants to get out alive.

The concept of the book is an obvious draw, with the setting a memorable one and hide-and-seek being a great horror concept. The opening sets up Mack’s creepy backstory, which drives her character throughout, and then you slowly meet the other competitors and watch as they begin the competition. The first few days and nights of the competition are particularly tense and I felt a real ominous sense before you fully knew what was going on. The twist won’t be to everyone’s tastes as the book becomes more supernatural horror, but I’d already expected that and I quite like how it plays out, a combination of human and otherworldly threat.

The writing can be a bit confusing as it changes perspectives quickly and once Mack starts the competition there’s a lot of characters for a while, but it wasn’t so much that I couldn’t keep track of what was going on, and it was fairly typical for some horror books that also try and cram in too many perspectives to build up tension. There’s ambiguity and not everything goes somewhere, but Hide is a fun horror novel with a good setting and an ominous atmosphere for the set up that turns into a fairly exciting narrative to end.