Title: Seven All Alone
Author: Kirsty McKay
Publication: December 2, 2025
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, YA Fiction
Pages: 352
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SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Years ago, a tragedy shook a small community in rural Scotland. A bus driver kidnapped seven elementary school children, drove them into the wildnerness, and held them captive in a cave, before jumping from a cliff’s edge. The children were unharmed, and for the most part, young enough to grow up and put their ordeal behind them.
But on the anniversary of their childhood trauma, Maggie, Ant, Ben, Stephanie, Lawrie, Seb, and Cass are on a school survival trip up in the mountains and cut off from the rest of the world when a storm hits. There’s no help in sight and the group discovers they are just a stone’s throw from the scene of their traumatic kidnapping.
As the group struggles to survive the elements, they realize someone else is on the mountain, someone who knows what really happened all those years ago, someone who wants them dead and is willing to take them out one by one.
REVIEW:
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
What are the odds that a group of kids is kidnapped and then years later they are thrown into another traumatizing situation? I do not know the statistics, but this is exactly what Kirsty McKay wrote in Seven All Alone, and I was interested to know what was going to happen! From the start, you could feel the tension as this group of kids is thrust into a trip they did not sign up for and did not want to go on.
The story mainly follows Maggie as she is sent on a school survival trip into the same region in which her and a group of kids were kidnapped by a bus driver years earlier and almost killed. I cannot emphasize enough how fast I would have not gone on this trip. No chance! But they go and almost instantly they are seperated by some somewhat crazy natural disasters and then quickly find out that they may not be alone on the mountain. I really liked Maggie, but she almost had an air of naivete to her, which was frustrating at times. She was entirely too trusting for someone kidnapped as a child. Ant was probably one of my favorite characters, because they constantly kept the story interesting, but also just gave off good vibes from the first interaction. All the others gave me mixed vibes and I was suspicious of most of them throughout the story. McKay did a great job of keeping me guessing and at one point I was even questioning if this was supernatural, which would have been very disappointing. Spoiler… it’s not.
McKay has a fluid writing style that just keeps the story flowing smoothly and keeps me wanting to know more. I read this faster than any book I had in recent months because I just needed to know what was going on. I have not read another book by McKay before, but I am now a fan and look forward to reading more of her work. This book is perfect for any who loves a detailed, well-written and twisty suspense thriller with lots of action and lots of characters to guess from. Must read!
