Survive by Alex Morel

Jane is running away from everything. From the facility she's been living in, from her pain, from her guilt, from life. She boards a plane to Montclair, New Jersey, though her destination does not matter - she doesn't plan to be alive when the plane lands. Jane has planned the perfect suicide. She'll fall asleep on the plane and never wake up. But as she's reaching for her pills in the tiny bathroom, the plane hits turbulence. Another jolt, the engine's down. The plane crashes into the cold, remote mountains of Montana, and Jane and a boy named Paul are the only two survivors. It took a brush with death to make Jane realise that she didn't want to die. But now there is snow, mountains, cliffs, little food and no water standing between life and death. And suddenly it's not just Jane. There is another person in the equation and she needs to get them both to safety. She needs them both to survive.

a really quick read but it packs a punch

i love survival stories but i feel like short survival stories like this book shouldn't exist. Survival stories need at least 500 pages. The longer we know the characters fighting for survival and the longer we are immersed in the survival situation ourselves (reading it not actually surviving it lol) then the more we can connect and immerse ourselves into the pain of survival (if that makes sense?)
longer survival books make for good endings idk

I hated how it was written, I hated the characters, I hated the insta love and trauma bonding. Just really didn’t like this book.

I have a rule to get great surprises from books that I don’t read the backs, however that worked out worse for this book in specific since I wasn’t expecting all of the suicide talk and I really am not in the right frame of mind to be hearing all of those details. So just warning you if you don’t feel ready , don’t read it. But also probably don’t read it anyway because it’s not like there was anything I enjoyed about it.

I have always loved a good survival novel. I can add this one to the list of good ones. While it took a bit to get to the mountain (and considering the flap had already told me what was coming), once it got there it was surprising, informative, and page flipping action. I have always judged a survival novel unfairly, I expect to see the characters to learn and use actual survival skills (I guess I am thinking that a reader may pick something up that may be useful to them in a similar situation). Some of those skills are present in this story.
I dropped a star only because I was not sure about the Paul character, he seemed a mix bag of many different personalities and while that added to the suspense, I don't think I understood him enough to care about him. I was also a little concerned that Jane's “depression” is put on hold because of this incident, leading toward the “snap out of it” mentality that folks who do not understand depression think about depressed people. I do understand that adrenaline took over, I would have liked an understanding that Jane had to battle the disease (especially as she was not medicated).
Overall, a great adventure read. I will recommend it to my mature readers (who can handle the suicidal theme). I was thinking that Ellen Hopkins fans might relate to Jane, and also readers of Elizabeth Scott.