Close Your Eyes and Count to 10: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

Overview

"[Unger's] great at keeping you interested and not seeing all the twists that are coming with a fabulous cat-mouse game." —Sarah Michelle Gellar, Emmy-award winning actress

An extreme game of hide-and-seek turns deadly in this riveting new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger, the "queen of thrillers you can also discuss with your book club" (BookPage).

Charismatic daredevil and extreme adventurer Maverick Dillan invites you to the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. But as the players gather on Falcao Island, the event quickly spirals into a chilling test of survival. A storm rages as a deadly threat stalks the contestants, turning the challenge into something far more sinister than the social media stunt it was intended to be.

Enter Adele, a single mother with a fierce determination to protect her children at all costs. When she begins the game, she unwittingly enters a twisted web of deception and intrigue. Can she maneuver through the treacherous storm and the relentless competition and get home to her family? In a ruthless battle for survival where the stakes are higher than ever, the blurry line between the virtual and the real proves that the only person we can trust is ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780778333364
Publisher:	Park Row Books
Publication date:	02/25/2025
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	4,352
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Lisa Unger is a NYT and internationally bestselling author. Her books are published in 32 languages, with millions of copies sold worldwide. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few writers including Agatha Christie. Her work has been named on "Best Book" lists from Today, People, GMA, EW, Amazon, IndieBound and many others. She has written for the NYT, WSJ, NPR, and Travel+Leisure. She lives in Florida with her family.

Editorial Reviews

12/09/2024

Unger (The New Couple in 5B) centers this overstuffed action thriller around a dangerous game of hide and seek. Former extreme sports star Maverick Dillan runs a wildly popular production company that specializes in high-profile, high-stakes adventures for thrill seekers. His latest contest—a game of hide and seek with a million-dollar prize—is set to take place on the beautiful Falcão Island, part of a remote archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Adele, a newly single mother, has entered the competition with the encouragement of her two teenage children. Shortly after she arrives on Falcão, a storm rocks the island, and dire warnings from a local mystic strike an ominous tone. Then rumors swirl that a missing contestant has been murdered. Unger overcomplicates her closed-circle setup, introducing podcast transcripts, convoluted backstories for her characters, and a dizzying number of narrators. While some twists satisfy and the pace remains brisk throughout, this doesn’t live up to its potential. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Lisa Unger just gets better and better! In Close Your Eyes and Count to 10, we see her masterful hand at work as she weaves a compulsively readable story packed full of tension from the very first page. As an extreme game of hide and seek quickly turned from stunt to survival, I held my breath as the plot twisted and turned to its dramatic conclusion. Pacy and gripping, I couldn’t read fast enough. Take it on holiday and savor every deliciously dark page.” —Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Wilds


“Twisty, riveting, and emotionally intense. You will NOT close your eyes once you start reading this book.” —Kathy Reichs, New York Times bestselling author of Fire and Bones


“Weaving together multiple points of view from her believable characters, Unger plunges the reader right into a sense of dread, then skillfully ratchets up the physical terrors of the challenge while revealing one disturbing secret after another. The perils of the real and virtual worlds collide effectively in this relentlessly paced thriller.”
—Kirkus Starred Review

"Unger's latest is a fast-paced, atmospheric, locked-room thriller...Readers of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware will surely enjoy this nail-biter." —Booklist


“Lisa Unger returns with another white-knuckle survival thriller... Twists arrive relentlessly, keeping readers on edge and guessing until the final, breath-stealing twist. Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 proves that sometimes the real threat is hiding in plain sight.” —The Seattle Times

“As entertainment blurs with reality, this tense thriller asks how far someone might go to protect the ones they love.” —The Washington Post

“Hide-and-seek is a classic kids’ game, but in Lisa Unger’s heart-pounding new thriller, Close Your Eyes and Count to 10, it’s far from child’s play... Her carefully crafted psychological thrillers are reliable bestsellers, thanks to her skill at creating engaging, complex characters and her mastery of the killer plot twist. This book does all that and, like many of her recent books, makes effective use of our dependence on our devices. The question is whether they save our lives or become the death of us.” —Tampa Bay Times, Colette Bancroft for Bay Magazine

“The queen of thrillers you can also discuss with your book club is back with this high-stakes suspense novel about a game of hide-and-seek that turns murderous.” —BookPage

“CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO 10 is just about what you would expect from a Lisa Unger novel —- complicated characters, dangerous settings, and plot twist after plot twist. It was nice to spend time with her as she put the competitive reality show genre under her literary microscope and spun it into something formidable.” —BookReporter

From the Publisher

★ 2024-12-14
Engaging characters meet for a game that turns deadly.

Adele Crane’s life was shattered when her seemingly wonderful husband, Miller, vanished along with millions of dollars embezzled from the tech company he founded. Adele has been struggling to make a living and raise her traumatized kids: fiercely independent Violet and sweet-natured introvert Blake. Always athletic, she’s rebuilt her confidence with half-marathons and an online presence as a health influencer. So, it makes sense when Blake suggests she apply for a streaming reality competition for influencers called Extreme Hide and Seek. Contestants are taken to some challenging location, where they hide from the Extreme team. Last one found wins $1 million. That’s how Adele finds herself on remote Falcão Island, the site of Enchantments, a luxury resort built in the 1980s but long abandoned and now about to collapse. It’s quickly apparent that the Extreme team itself is on the verge of chaos. Its founder and star, Maverick Dillan, began his career as a kid doing skate stunts for viral videos, but now he heads a hugely successful enterprise—or so it seems. Maverick is approaching middle age, and all his past injuries and current pressures are catching up with him, accelerated by the fact that on the last round of Extreme Hide and Seek, one contestant, a young woman named Chloe Miranda, hid and was never found—something that internet vigilantes won’t let him forget. Maverick’s girlfriend, no-nonsense Angeline, is holding him and the company together, but it’s tough. The team’s other three members are his oldest friends, but fractures are appearing. Adele’s competitors, a former kids’ show host called Wild Cody and a famous young mountain climber named Malinka Niqui, have problems of their own. As they assemble on Falcão for the contest, they’re warned to leave by a mysterious old woman with a paramilitary backup team—and then a huge tropical storm blows in. Weaving together multiple points of view from her believable characters, Unger plunges the reader right into a sense of dread, then skillfully ratchets up the physical terrors of the challenge while revealing one disturbing secret after another.

The perils of the real and virtual worlds collide effectively in this relentlessly paced thriller.

Kirkus Reviews