"Five Survive" by Holly Jackson

6 17/18 year olds are in an RV on the way to a week of camping. Red (female) and Arthur are in the early stages of friendship. Red and Maddy are lifelong friends. Maddy and Oliver are siblings. Raynor is driving. Oliver's her boyfriend. Simon is there too. A sniper starts shooting at them, bursting the types and hitting the fuel tank. Oliver takes control.

Red's dad's a drinker. Her mother (police) died - shot in an abandoned power station. Oliver and Maddy's mother is a deputy DA currently prosecuting a gangster leader, Frank, for murder. Perhaps the sniper wants to know who the key eye-witness is.

The sniper leaves them a walkie-talkie. He says that one of them has a secret. Once that person comes forward, the others will be saved. Oliver admits that when a man accosted Raynor, he hit him and he died. Raynor tells Oliver that it wasn't a random man. It was a man she was having an affair with.

They think up escape plans. They fail. 2 curious people who live nearby ask if they want help. They're shot dead. The sniper seems to know what's going on inside the RV. Oliver gets the others to look for a hidden microphone, then suspects that one of them is a wired-up mole. "Lord of the Flies" is mentioned.

Then Red says that she's the key witness, that she's had several meetings with Oliver's mother. Should she give herself up to the sniper? They anonymously vote on it. Though the majority say no, she walks out. She's not shot. Oliver decides that since Red is immune she's guilty. He gets Maddy to dress in Red's clothes so she can go out and drive away in the dead couple's vehicle. She goes out and is shot in the leg - wounded but not dead. Just as Red manages to contact someone on a walkie-talkie channel, Arthur takes the walkie-talkie from her and smashes it. He's Frank's son. He wants to know who's framing his father. Red says that Oliver's mother is paying her to be a witness. Arthur says she's been exchanging info with the gang for 10 years. She made Red think that Frank's gang killed her mother. Red realises that Oliver's mother killed her mother (who'd realised what Oliver's mother was up to), and that Maddy had known what had happened.

The cops arrive. Red is shot by the police. She imagines talking to her mother. Oliver dies.

It ends with a police transcript and a news item about the murder of Oliver's mother. Arthur sent Red a letter saying that Arthur had killed her. Red survives. Arthur gives her money to pay the health fees.

The reviews say this is YA. I like "the flat tyre unpuddles off the ground" (when it's pumped up) and "her head undone" (of a woman who'd been shot in the head) but not "into two unequal halves"

Other reviews

• missknown (A small group of people trapped and only the secret of one of them can set them free isn’t a new concept. It’s always a fun story for the drama and the usual fast pace. It’s a type of story that will keep you on the edge of your seat. And Five Survive was no different. Although of all the stories I’ve seen with this plot, this one is my least favourite. ... In the end, they all had some sort of secret, except ones were insignificant compared to others. This also meant the characters didn’t equally share the suspects’ pool, which defies one of the core purposes of the mystery. ... But the ending… It wasn’t satisfying. There’s a lot of injustice behind the secret the sniper is after, and while it’s resolved, it’s not resolved satisfyingly. I felt there was so much wrongness that wasn’t righted. And so I much prefer the journey even if it wasn’t perfect. But the ending… It wasn’t satisfying. There’s a lot of injustice behind the secret the sniper is after, and while it’s resolved, it’s not resolved satisfyingly. I felt there was so much wrongness that wasn’t righted. And so I much prefer the journey even if it wasn’t perfect.)
• thewrittenvoiceofis (I wasn’t fully invested until 60 percent of the book. ... It drags in places (those early 60 percent pages could have been edited to fewer escape descriptions), and not all six characters bring much to the table, and honestly, Jackson could have gone and been wilder with the twist. Until then, I thought Holly Jackson’s new venture into thriller was rather lackluster.)
• frappesandfiction (Holly Jackson knows how to write a page-turner for sure. However, my main issues with the book were the flat characters and lack of realism. ... There were a lot of awkwardly-worded sentences, as well as odd sentence placement and scene transitions.)