'Savage Island' has to be my favourite of all the Red Eye books. It's so atypical in terms of setting and tropes but I LOVED that Bryony thought outside of the box and made geocaching something to fear! The whole book played on expectations and cliches, and even though I was biting my nails the whole way through, I loved every second of it!

What would you do for a million pounds...?

Today I am very tired and this book is the reason. I just could not bring myself to put it down and ended up staying up deep into the night just devouring every page.

When first reading the blurb I was kind of expecting a story along very similar lines to Battle Royale or The Hunger Games but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was much more elegant than that. With echos of The Troop and even Lord of the Flies there is far more of a psychological element to the story.

The five main characters were compelling and interesting and the author managed to avoid most of the usual stereotypes and tropes. We learn the most about Ben and Will, the two brothers of the group and so they tended to have the most character development. I do wish we could have learned more about the other characters and their backgrounds so the reader could connect to them a little more.

The flashbacks to Ben and Will's childhood experiences were almost more disturbing than the main story. Their mother is a true villain and you can't help but feel for Ben particularly. The reader having this connection with Ben means that you really do care about what happens to him and his friends and helps to invest the reader in the story.

The story itself is certainly fast paced and I just couldn't stop turning the pages to find out what happens next. The twists and turns towards the end were brilliant and I genuinely did not know how it was going to end until it did.

I absolutely recommend this book, particularly for its intended audience - young adults with a love for horror. I had a blast reading it.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review

This book had some very good points and was definitely a bit dark and twisted. The characters were all very individual and felt like teenagers trapped on an island, suffering from trauma. I was very conscious the whole time that they were just kids. Sometimes teens in books feel and act much older than they're meant to be. They were lost and confused most of the time. How did it end up like this? How will they make it home? Will they ever make it home? One of theirs ends up in a bad way and that made it very real that there were others on the island who were ruthless and would do anything for the money.

At points the flashbacks were a bit confusing. There was no clue that we'd suddenly flashed to the past and that was quite distracting the first few times. However, they were good backstory for our main character and set up a lot of intrigue regarding his brother, Will.

This book was definitely an interesting read but it’s probably more suited to a young teen. Despite not liking a few writing choices and having an issue with one plot twist, I do not regret reading it. It was quick paced, with unique characters that all felt like they had their own voice. If you want a cheery book with a happy ending this probably isn’t for you. But I think a young teen who enjoys something a bit dark or liked Point Horror will probably like this. I won’t get it in paperback but I think I will reread it at some point in the future.

Savage Island by Bryony Pearce is the latest in the Red Eye YA horror series from Stripes Publishing, centering around an "Iron Teen" competition set on a private island owned by reclusive millionnaire Marcus Gold. Teenagers Ben, Lizzie, Will, Grady and Carmen sign up - the prize is £1 million each. But when the competition takes a dark turn, the group regrets entering: their competitiors are hunting them, leading them to fight for their survival, not knowing who they can trust.

The book really starts to get going a couple of chapters in when our teenagers arrive on the island, discovering that the competition itself seems rather harmless. They have three days in which to hunt for a series of geocaches, answer riddles for each and get the location of the next until they've opened them all - then it's a race to the end. Early on, one of the group has a horrifying experience and that sets the tone for most of the book. Unfortunately by the end of the title the revelations became predictable, though, and with little character development other than that of Will and Ben, I found I wasn't invested enough in the group to care about their fate(s).

Flash-backs are often used in literature to establish a back story but whereas usually these are intermittent chapters, in Savage Island they're thrown in randomly, often in between paragraphs or scenes within the main storyline itself. This, for me, made the novel feel rather disjointed. Reading an eARC, this could partly be blamed on early formatting because there were also numerous unnecessary paragraph breaks and any word that began with the letters "FL" (eg. flight) had a space between the letters. Hopefully these issues will be fixed before the book is published on 5th April 2018 and will lead to a better reading experience for those who pick up this title in the future.

Overall Savage Island has a good premise and is a quick, steadily-paced, suspenseful psychological horror that plays up the tension in places and doesn't rely on gore or shocks to keep readers turning the pages. Unfortunately it just didn't work for me but I can see the appeal for the target audience - YA readers.

Due Out: 5th April 2018

Note: The publishers kindly provided me with an eARC of this title via Netgally for review purposes.

This title was way below the normal standard of Red Eye titles and so I found this very disappointing and predictable. A group of teenagers enter a competition to win a million pounds in an endurance survival competition on an island near the Shetlands. Everything is secretive and social media is banned. Very quickly the friends realise the competition has a bit more than problem solving and one girl loses a finger and things then get worse in a fight for survival. All in all this was a dull read, undemanding teens might get a kick out of it, but a decent teen reader would read stuff more challenging than this. Obviously the organisation behind the event have their own secret agenda, but by the time it was revealed I couldn't care less. Also, the description of the remote Island was non-existent. It could have been anywhere. Very dull, Red Eye need to bring out better horror than this, in fact I wouldn't call this horror at all.

SAVAGE ISLAND is a new title from Stripes Publishing’s Red Eye selection of horror novels for teens – I’ve never read a Red Eye title before (I own FROZEN CHARLOTTE by Alex Bell, but I haven’t got round to it yet). It follows a group of teens who go to a remote island for a competition, only for the contest to take a dark turn.

I’ve seen the “friends go to a remote island and bad stuff happens” plot done quite a bit (Scooby Doo, anyone?) so was hoping for something a bit different with this one. And honestly, it surprised me – I was expecting a straight-up slasher, but this is more of a psychological horror, running on high stakes and tension rather than gore and shocks. The use of flashbacks was also well done, and Pierce expertly shows the effects of psychological abuse on Ben and Will – this was probably one of my favourite parts of the book.

Unfortunately, I found the novel fell apart by the end – a shame, as it was exceeding my expectations until the last chapter or so. I’m extremely picky with horror and thrillers so it may be more just personal preference, but I didn’t find the revelations to be particularly shocking.

Psychopathy plays a large part in the book, and honestly…I wasn’t very keen on its portrayal in the novel. It’s an extremely rare occurrence and is still largely misunderstood by most people – I initially thought the book was subverting common misconceptions about it, but then it changed tack and fell back into cliches again.

Overall, SAVAGE ISLAND is a quick read and plays up the tension and pace very well, but doesn’t really manage to do much new with the genre. If you want an easy horror read with some good character development, I’d recommend picking this up.

For fans of: S.T.A.G.S. by M.K. Bennett, LYING ABOUT LAST SUMMER by Sue Wallman, CRUEL SUMMER by Juno Dawson

5 friends sign up for the chance of a life-time competition to win 1 million pounds each – the task? Just complete some puzzles and find some geocaches on a secretive private island – how hard can that be? But the island holds sinister secrets, the competition is not all it appears and the other teams seem to be playing for much higher stakes…

Savage Island is the latest horror in the Red Eye YA Horror Series from Bryony Pearce. I would say this is less a horror story and more a psychological thriller although it does get a bit gory in places. The premise itself is great, as a geocacher myself the idea of finding something… unwelcome… in a box is intriguing and stuck with me after I had finished the book. The riddles and puzzles the group have to solve keep the story interesting and it’s paced nicely – with the stakes gradually getting higher and higher as the plot builds to a crescendo. The 5 characters are nicely written and well-rounded and the fact it’s written in the first person from the perspective of Ben helps to draw you into the story.

My main problem with the book was with the narrative itself – it seemed very disjointed at times and in several places I found myself turning back to see if I had missed a page or a paragraph. The story occasionally jumps around which is at odds to the rest of the writing style. For example, right at the beginning they are filling out the questionnaire to join the competition and then half-way through the scene you suddenly get the letter of acceptance with nothing to join the two. Later they go to fetch a geocache box without something important that they need to open it. They suddenly produce something they have created to work around the problem but nothing had been said about them making it or having the idea – it’s suddenly just there for them to use.

Although the use of flash-backs works well to establish backstory, it felt like they were thrown in randomly; they weren’t clearly defined and they confused the plot in places. They were needed as exposition to make the ending work but they weren’t particularly placed sympathetically in the present narrative. As I was reading an advance copy pdf of the book there were some formatting errors – including odd paragraph breaks, which may make this a little clearer but I didn’t feel this was solely a formatting problem.

Overall it’s a really good premise and a really interesting story. It’s easily comparable to novels like Lord of the Flies or The Hunger Games but it brings something new to the table in a modern day setting. There’s a good ending and it’s use of suspense and slow-raising stakes makes it interesting to read. My only criticisms are the odd use of flash-backs and occasional disjointed narrative but otherwise I recommend it. Thank you to NetGalley and Little Tiger Group for the chance to read and review Savage Island.

I've read several of the Red Eye Books now - growing up on a diet of Point Horror and Christopher Pike has left its' mark. For terrifying, icy cold, leave-the-light-on, Alex Bell is queen. But for psychological, chilling, what-would-I-do-I'd-never-do-that-but-what-if-what-if-what, it's Bryony Pearce all the way. She simply can't be bettered. (She's also excellent at cliff hangers, but that's another topic.)

Five teenagers join an 'Iron Teen' contest, billed as an endurance test crossed with an intelligence test. Between them, they think they can handle anything. When they reach the isolated island, however, they find out exactly how wrong they are. Soon they're injured, cut off from help and being hunted down. And as they soon learn, they can't trust anyone...including each other...

There's a couple of chapters where I wasn't too sure, but once they hit the island the pace never lets up. One character reveal came as a surprise to me. The other I figured out early on, but I'm fairly sure we were meant to. A horrifying incident not too far in sets the tone for the rest of the novel, and the pace never eases off all the way to the end. Thrilling and chilling, a great story for a horror fan. Be wary of some violence.

I was reading an eARC, so I'm sure this will be fixed in the final edition, but there were several very abrupt flashbacks. A couple of times I had to stop, go back and reread to figure out what was going on. I've marked down one star for that. But I'll definitely be looking out for more Bryony books. I look forward to being chilled by her all over again.

Receiving an ARC did not in any way affect my review of this title.