Five Total Strangers by Natalie D Richards
A cancelled flight, a car full of strangers, a worsening blizzard, and the creeping realisation that someone in the vehicle may not want everyone to make it home alive.
📚 Pre-Reading Thoughts
Natalie D. Richards and Sourcebooks Fire have become a very reliable combination for tightly paced YA thrillers, so my expectations going in were high. And honestly, “snowstorm road trip with strangers” is already an excellent thriller setup because it naturally strips away safety and escape routes one icy mile at a time.
There’s nowhere to go. Everyone’s trapped together. Perfect.
📖 Post-Reading
As I thought…
The tension escalation is handled really well. The story understands that claustrophobia is the real engine here: not just physical danger, but the growing feeling that Mira is trapped in a moving situation she no longer fully understands.
The pacing keeps tightening at exactly the right speed. Little concerns become serious problems, suspicion spreads through the group, and the worsening weather amplifies every bad decision.
The winter atmosphere is incredibly effective. You can practically feel the freezing air every time someone opens a car door.
It surprised me by…
How grounded Mira’s emotional motivations feel. Her desperation to get home could easily have tipped into melodrama, but the family situation underneath it is handled with enough restraint that it feels believable rather than manufactured.
How well the book captures the social unease of being trapped with strangers. Every interaction becomes loaded once trust starts eroding. Even ordinary conversations begin to feel threatening.
The balancing act with the misdirection. There’s one particular moment that edges very close to “okay, are we lying to the reader now?” territory, but it just manages to stay on the acceptable side of the thriller line for me.
And honestly, snowstorm thrillers remain terrifying because nature itself becomes part of the trap. Even if you identify the danger, where exactly are you supposed to go? Into the freezing dark beside the road?
Absolutely not.
🎧 Music Pairing
🎵 Featured Song: Run Boy Run
🎶 Vibe Album: Twin Peaks — cold atmosphere, lingering dread, and the sense that something is wrong beneath ordinary conversations.
🎧 Artist Recommendation: Daughter — sparse, tense, emotionally sharp music perfect for winter-night anxiety.
🌈 Vibe Check
Colour Palette: ice grey, pine green, dirty snow white, dashboard-light amber
Soundtrack: tyres hissing on icy roads, wind battering the car, tense silence after someone says something suspicious
Season: deep winter during the kind of storm meteorologists use dramatic hand gestures for
Mood: claustrophobic, suspicious, tense, increasingly desperate
Scent: cold air through cracked windows, wet wool, pine trees buried under snow
🃏 Tarot Pull
Eight of Swords Feeling trapped, uncertainty, paranoia, and the terrifying realisation that limited information can be just as dangerous as outright lies. Perfect for a thriller built around isolation and eroding trust.
👀 For fans of
Identity
Frozen (the ski lift one, not the Disney one)
enclosed-space thrillers where weather becomes part of the antagonist
Five Total Strangers is available now. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
