These initial moments allow the reader to learn about the characters. The first few days of the competition seem straight forward, some contestants are caught, but for the remaining everything carries on as normal. Good horror does not have to reveal all immediately, Hide comes from the Jaws or Alien school of fear show only a small element of the true terror until the closing sections. White has written in Hide a slow burn of a horror novel that left me feeling queasy in places. Horror is such a delicious genre as it written to entertain, but also disturb and make the reader uncomfortable. 14 contestants find themselves in an abandoned amusement park, each day two will be caught, but as the days progress it seems that the prize money may not be real and the seeker not quite human. When she is offered a place in a hide and seek competition it seems like a bad idea, but she could really use the $50000 prize money. In the present, she is a shell of a human being unable to trust, unable to live a real life.

Mack is a person who knows all about hiding, in her troubled past she once in a very real game of hide and seek that saw the rest of her family butchered. Kiersten White’s Hide is all about these feelings, but the price of being caught is not to wait by the table for the next game, but a far more permanent end.

The heightened senses as you hear the footsteps of the seeker drawing closer. That crackling of electricity in your chest as you huddle in a hiding place waiting to get caught. As an adult it is easy to forget how exhilarating hide and seek was when you were a child.

Hide by kiersten white