Small Game by Blair Braverman

​I love a good survival story. This was a good survival story. Braverman, making her fictional debut, has created a thoroughly immersive world – a middle of nowhere set to be televised for the amusement of the reality tv addicts and five people driven to be cast in the show for very different reasons.
Mara, the main protagonist, is there for a fresh start that the prize money would afford her. She’s so very young and yet already tired of her life. A child of survivalist/prepper off-gridder parents turn survival retreat guide for the people with too much money and not enough sense, stuck in a dead-end relationship, no plans, no savings, Mara sees this show as an opportunity to buy a new life.
Her teammates/costars are in it for fame, recognition, opportunity to prove themselves. It’s all about second chances, really.
The show’s premise isn’t a wildly original one, just another spin on the Survivor. The producer is a creep. But it’s moving along…until it comes to a stop. Suddenly, the cameras are gone, and the cast of the show find themselves alone, abandoned, deliberately or on purpose.
Now the real survival begins.
All the drama, all the excitement, all the dangers, all the creativity and the desperation come out in cinematic vividness once the camera stop rolling. Once it is no longer a game.
Exciting, engaging, entertaining…all the Es of good and great reading, this book is a terrific literary adventure in the wilderness. The writing, the pacing, the characters…all done so well, most impressive for a debut. You won’t want to put this book down and coming in at just under 300 pages and being dynamically paced, you won’t really have to, not much anyway. I read it in one sitting with one pause for lunch and enjoyed it very much. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.