Blog Tour + Giveaway: Castaways by Jessika Fleck

I am happy to be joining YA Reads in their blog tour for the debut novel from Jessika Fleck titled The Castaways. Be sure to also check out the giveaway below!

The blurb as seen on Goodreads:
Release Date: April 3, 2017
Publisher: Entangled Teen
320 Pages

The Castaway Carnival: fun, mysterious, dangerous.

Renowned for its infamous corn maze…and the kids who go missing in it.

When Olive runs into the maze, she wakes up on an isolated and undetectable island where a decades-long war between two factions of rival teens is in full swing.

Trapped, Olive must slowly attempt to win each of her new comrades’ hearts as Will—their mysterious, stoically quiet, and handsome leader—steals hers.

Olive is only sure about one thing: her troop consists of the good guys, and she’ll do whatever it takes to help them win the war and get back home.

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 The Castaways is a fantasy of sorts. I mean, it involves a carnival that can magically transform you to an island. That sounds pretty cool, right? Well, what if this island was in the middle of a war and you just unwillingly chose sides?

When the Castaway Carnival rolls into town, Olive agrees to take her little brother with one rule - no going in the corn maze. Because, see, kids go missing in the maze and Olive is not about to take that chance. But when she's cornered by a group of mean girls from school who's life mission is to torment her, Olive unwillingly runs into the maze. And then finds herself on an island. She quickly discovers that island is inhabited by missing kids from all eras and that they never age. Also, there's a war. 

Fleck does a good job of bringing this mysterious island to life and it plays it's own part in the book as if it's a character in itself. It seems to give and take as it pleases - both protecting and endangering the kids as they try to find a way back home. 

Then there's the kids themselves. Duke and Will were the first on the island (well, in this group at least). They arrived as enemies and stayed that way which leads to the island war going on when Olive arrives. As the book progresses, we learn about each character and what brought them to the island. They realize that there's a theme: they were all running from something when they vanished. Olive believes that since they all were brought under similar circumstances that this must be some key to getting home, however, before she's able to fully test that theory the war blows up. 

To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of Olive. Her constant lying from the moment she arrived on the island literally drove me nuts. Like, all of these people laid bare their stories and she just lied. This book, for me, was more about the background characters. Jude, Lewis, Bug, Tilly - they were all so much more interesting than Olive and kept me reading the book.

Overall, a good debut. Something a little new and I look forward to more from the author.

Thank you for YA Reads and Entangled Teen for allowing me to be a part of this Blog Tour. I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.