Book Review | ARC Review | Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti

416 pages

Published: April 2023

Read: March 2023

The Breakfast Club meets The Usual Suspects in this riveting YA mystery told entirely through the first-person police interviews of four teens over the course of several hours that asks: what happened at Salvation Creek?

An influencer, an over achiever, a heartthrob, an outcast, and a conspiracy theorist go into the woods for a camping trip at Salvation Creek.

Sometime around midnight, one of them vanishes.

Now, the four who came back are under suspicion, and they each have a very different story to tell about the events of the night.

With one of them missing, and the clock ticking, why would they lie? Who is hiding what? And what dark truths will their lies reveal?

Link to Goodreads

Jump to Spoilers

Main Characters

Maylee – popular, instagram influencer
John – Maylee’s boyfriend, very smart
Petra – Maylee’s ‘best friend’, her father is a cop
Nolan – Petra’s half brother
Ashleigh – a loner, last minute invite to the group; ex girlfriend of Maylee

My Review

The whole book is the ‘transcript’ of a police interrogation. Five high schoolers went out into the woods for an overnight camping trip.. but one of them didn’t come out.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit.. until the ending. The ending was very strange/anticlimactic. Overall, a quick and easy read – definitely a good YA book.

Likes

I wasn’t expecting the set up of the whole book to be police interrogations, it was different and I actually liked it. It was fun to read how each character’s story changed throughout the questioning

Dislikes

The ending…
The over hyped up big foot conspiracy theory

Spoilers

Do not expand this section unless you want to see spoilers

Nolan kills Maylee when he thinks she is Bigfoot. Maylee and Ashleigh had planned to have Maylee go to Ashleigh’s dad’s hunting cabin and hide out there. She would be considered missing and take the money from the go fund me accounts that would get raised to start a new life elsewhere as an influencer.