Trigger warnings: Various depictions of violent death, references to teen drinking and drug abuse, in depth planning of suicide
Synopsis: When seventeen-year-old senator's son Grant Tavish is involved in a fatal accident, all he wants to do is face the consequences of what he's done, but the consequences never come, even if headlines of "affluenza" do. The truth soon becomes clear: Due to his father's connections, not only will Grant not be held accountable for his actions, he's going to get away with murder.
When a long Tavish tradition approaches, a cave excursion on the Appalachian trail, Grant seizes the opportunity to take justice into his own hands by staging an accident and never coming back. But before he has a chance to enact his plans, the cave system collapses, trapping him miles beneath the surface with four other teens from much less fortunate circumstances. As they struggle to survive, they share their innermost secrets and fears, and just when it seems they might be on track to finding a way out, they realize there's something else down there.
And it's hunting them.
Review: The Unfortunates is a short book that follows Grant as he prepares for a cave excursion that everyone in his family does as a rite of passage. Grant is your standard boy with privilege and I didn't really care about him. He thinks that the best way to get out of his situation is to go on this outdoor adventure and use it as a way to kill himself because he doesn't want to face what he did. The beginning chunk of the book was Grant detailing how he phrased goodbyes so his death wouldn't look like a suicide, but it was still clear what he was trying to do. I felt like this didn't need to be that in depth. There could have been a paragraph of Grant saying his goodbyes and we could have moved onto the meat of the story. I feel like Kim Liggett wanted us to see his dad's influence more than anything, but I think we can all reasonably imagine the kinds of things a senator's son can get out of .
I think the story was meant to be creepy, but it really wasn't. Maybe I just found the ending to be a bit predictable, but I was never worried about what was going to happen to Grant. Trying to get out of the cave allows Grant to really figure out what skills he does possess, and it allows him to figure out trauma and grief. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if this was pitched as a survival story instead of a horror novel. Or maybe the book should have been longer. I don't know that 200 pages is really enough to tackle privilege, regret, trauma, honesty, and standing up for what's right. We also don't get much of a resolution at the end.
Quick read, but painfully average.
3 howls
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