Cut Off by Adrienne Finlay Book Review

I hopefully will never get tired of the YA genre, especially since a fair few are much easier to digest than adult ones. With this one, I felt a bit like I’d already read it, and with it came some fatigue, but there was enough to keep me interested. I’ve read better, and I’ve also read much worse.

Cut Off is the name of a reality show that four teenagers have signed up for (well, one of them is a young employee for the company and another is an heir to some wealth and the other two are more ordinary goers who were interviewed for the trials.) It is a show where they end up going out into the wild and trying to survive away from everyone for a month without forfeiting. There are also drones that fly around to document them. One of the competitors ends up sabotaging a tent to try to gain an advantage, but then soon after, help is supposed to arrive, and it just doesn’t for some reason. So the four reluctantly team up to try to get out of the wilderness and figure out what could’ve malfunctioned in the game. But then when they actually do get back, they’re in for a surprise they can’t explain.

There was a book series I read a long time ago, The Sylo Chronicles by DJ MacHale, which had a very similar concept of almost everyone in the world disappearing from existence and having to survive with wits, beef jerky and siphoned gas. I also recently completed the two seasons of Alice in Borderland on Netflix, perhaps the most tense and deadly show I have ever watched, which was also about that. And most of us have read or watched something about surviving in the wilderness before. So this book doesn’t necessarily break any new ground. But it also doesn’t choose to take a slow burn.

Cut Off starts off in the forest with our four heroes, and we think this is going to be a long trip trying to either survive or get back home, like Mindy McGinnis’ superb Be Not Far From Me. But then we get to the second part and we sort of switch genres, trying to figure out where everyone went and how to set things right, if even possible. It’s basically a survival story with science-fiction and fantasy, switching story threads to keep things fresh.

Cam, River, Tripp and Lisa undergo quite the trek in this novel. They have to forage for food, escape monumental floods, run from abnormal killer creepy-crawlies, and face the idea everyone they ever cared for is dead. The ending and explanation are a little disappointing, and there’s a bit of a cop-out with a character death. Some of it is exciting and some of it is forgettable. Cut Off is one of the more fun books I have recently read, even if it didn’t bring any lasting ground with me. I mostly enjoyed myself, then I was happy to pick up something else.

My rating: 2.5/5