#Review - 10 Hours to Go by Keely Parrack #YA #Thrillers #Suspense

Series: Standalone
Format: Paperback, 288 pages
Release Date: February 6, 2024
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Thrillers & Suspense

Welcome to the highway of your nightmares in this fiery claustrophobic thriller for fans of Natalie D. Richards and Natasha Preston

Lily needs a ride—a fire warning in Oregon has cancelled her train home to California. Her ex-best friend, Natasha, has offered to pick Lily up on her way back from Portland, though they're barely on speaking terms. As it turns out, Natasha's also giving a ride to Elke Azizi, the girl Lily got expelled from their school four years ago. Elke hasn't forgotten, and neither has Natasha.

It's getting tense in the car, and it's not just about the past. There's smoke in the air, and with the wildfires nearby, staying on the road is becoming riskier by the hour. When Natasha and Elke decide to take a detour, Lily hopes it'll get them out of danger. She has no idea, though, what her former friends have planned for her.

But as night comes, the plans change again when it becomes all too clear that leaving the main road was a mistake. Now the three of them are trapped in the woods under a burning sky, with no easy way out. To survive, Lily must depend on Elke and Natasha—but after all that's happened, can she trust them with her life?

Keely Parrack's 10 Hours to Go is a story that is part revenge, and part survival. Lily is touring a college in Oregon when fire warnings cancel her train and leave her stranded. With her mother sick and waiting important tests, she reluctantly agrees to a ride with her former bestie, Natasha and Natasha's friend Elke Azizi whom Lily got expelled from school four years ago after an event that happened at Yosemite Adventure Camp.

While Lily is prepared for a tense, uncomfortable 10 hour drive home to California, it seems Natasha and Elke have other plans. Things become weird, when Natasha's boyfriend Darius seems to be in on the pot. When Natasha and Elke drift off in the woods, Lily realizes that something is definitely not right. Upon hearing Darius talking about making Lily pay for something that happened years before that divided them from once being best friends. 

But as night comes, the plans change again when it becomes all too clear that leaving the main road was a mistake. Now the three of them are trapped in the woods under a burning sky, with no easy way out. To survive, Lily must depend on Elke and Natasha—but after all that's happened, can she trust them with her life? With a ticking clock to natural disaster, the story combines locked-room-style tensions with survival elements and the unpredictability of nature. The story unfolds like an action movie full of revenge, betrayals, fire, and a desperate fight for survival and maybe forgiveness as well.

Why the rating? First of all, would you get in a car for 10 hours with someone who is no longer your friend, and likely has ulterior motives for agreeing to drive you home? No, I would not. Second, why would anyone get out of a perfectly good vehicle and wander off in the woods where creepy people with dogs seemingly have committed likely acts of violence against those who wandered into the woods? Third, it is pretty obvious that Lily isn't an innocent once you get the full scope of what transpired 4 years ago. Was Elke right to be upset? Yep. The fire scenes scared me, and I was a firefighter for almost 10 years. I remember a group of hotshot firefighters who died after a fire caught them and there was nothing they could do. Fire still scares me today. It's the one thing that impressed me that even after everything that happens, Lily and Elke, and even Natasha have real perils that they have to deal with.

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