Acknowledgments

My first and greatest thanks must go to you, reader. The blank page and the blinking cursor were al the more intimidating this time around, without the safety net and familiarity of my A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series.

Thank you for the phenomenal support you have shown that trilogy, and thank you even more for coming with me on another adventure, leaving Fairview, Connecticut, for a creepy, remote road in South Carolina. I hope you enjoyed the intense eight hours you spent in that RV.

A huge thank-you, as ever, to my agent, Sam Copeland, who had to admit that he actual y liked this book. Thank you for your bravery—it must have been very hard for you. Thanks also to Emily Hayward-Whitlock for everything that you do, and for taking such good care of my fictional worlds.

It is hard to express my immense gratitude to the team at Delacorte Press for everything they do, taking my stories and characters and turning them into real-life books. I wish there were more synonyms for the words “thank you,”

but alas, here comes a long list of thank-yous to everyone who helped bring Five Survive to life. It takes a vil age, as they say, and we certainly wouldn’t al fit in an RV at the same time!

A massive, massive thank-you to my superstar editor, Kelsey Horton, who is the best partner in crime (fictional) and who works tirelessly masterminding everything to make sure my books are the best they can be. Thank you for trusting me to disappear for months to write vague RV murdery book—I’m glad we found a better title for it! And an enormous thank-you to Beverly Horowitz—I’m so happy Five Survive found its perfect home with this team!

Thank you to Casey Moses, again, for being a genius designer, and for giving Five Survive such an incredible and cool cover. I don’t know how you do it. Thank you to Christine Blackburne and your photography prowess. I’m

so glad that the first thing readers wil see of the book is both of your incredible work. Thank you to Kenneth Crossland for making sure the inside of the book looks just as good as the outside! Thank you to Col een Fel ingham and Tamar Schwartz for your super attention to detail, and for having to go through the book so many times! Thank you to Tim Terhune for your hard work literal y bringing the book to life.

Thank you to Lili Feinberg, Caitlin Whalen and Elizabeth Ward for your incredible work cheerleading and championing this book, expertly creating buzz and making sure readers have heard about it. Thank you to Becky Green, Joe English and Kimberly Langus in sales for everything you do, working so hard to make sure the book can physical y find its way into the hands of readers and into new homes—I’m so grateful. And thanks to Keifer Ludwig for looking after this book on the international stage!

Thank you to my families—Col is and Jackson—for being the very first readers, for celebrating every high with me and for taking me out of the made-up worlds in my head when I need it! Anti-thanks to my dog, Dexter, without whom I would have written this book much faster. And last, but never least, thank you to Ben for sharing every real-life plot twist with me.