by Andrew Klavan
Will Peterson came to South America on a mission trip to build a wall.
He did not intend to get caught in the middle of a terrorist revolution. And with the revolutionaries winning, they don’t have to be afraid of killing Americans and the possible repercussions. Which means that Will and his friends are goners.
Or at least, they were goners until an Ex-Marine saves them in the nick of time. But Will and the others aren’t in the clear yet. To survive, they’ll have to make it across the border. And the revolutionaries are all over the country, hunting them down.
Until If We Survive, I had never really read a thriller book before, even though I had wanted to. And whoa–do they keep the action going.
From the very first sentence of the book, Klavan effortlessly has the reader engaged, which keeps them reading when he pauses the action and explains a bit of backstory. And even in the midst of the necessary backstory, he drops enough hints of tension to make them keep reading.
One of the areas where the book was a little weaker was probably in the characters themselves. I didn’t feel that I necessarily connected with any of them. However, I was still very curious about whether or not they were going to make it.
If We Survive definitely fits the thriller bill with its practically non-stop action. And even when the characters have a chance to breathe, the tension doesn’t drop. Both the reader and the characters know that it isn’t over yet.
There is a fair bit of violence in the book, because of the terrorist revolution and having to survive, and it mostly involves shooting/getting shot at. While a few people get harmed/die, it all remains non-graphic. However, if you are sensitive to reading about characters dying/almost dying/shooting guns, you may not want to read If We Survive.
Cautions: moderate-heavy, non-graphic violence; one kiss
Hailey Huntington 