Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

Vivienne Leheny's lively narration perfectly suits this high-stakes thriller. Single mother Adele, desperate for money, joins an extreme game of hide-and-seek at an abandoned island resort hosted by Maverick Dillan, an adventurer who is her son's favorite social media personality. Amid warnings from locals and a raging storm, prize money becomes the least of the contestants' worries. Lines begin to blur between the intentional drama created by Maverick's crew and the eerie, remote setting for the game. Leheny's performance maintains listener interest throughout the story's slow start. Her range is showcased as she transitions among the polite, clipped tones of adults, shouting teens, and nervous contestants who shift from confident on-camera personas to shaky-voiced apprehension. A.L.C. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

Lisa Unger’s latest thriller, Close Your Eyes and Count to 10, features a livestreamed game of hide-and-seek with a $1 million prize. An abandoned resort called Enchantments offers plenty of places for contestants to hide on desolate Falcao Island. What could possibly go wrong? As one mysterious commenter and viewer says, “Has anything unstitched the fabric of our humanity more than the things that we have devised to entertain ourselves?” As she did in books like Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six and The New Couple in 5B, bestselling author Unger ramps up a labyrinth of twists and turns from start to finish. There are only a handful of contestants, and readers will find themselves rooting for struggling mother Adele, who desperately needs the prize money to provide for her teenage son and daughter. Her son, Blake, is excited for his daredevil mom to meet host Maverick Dillon, whose manic zest for extreme adventure is fueled by his colossal ego. But both Maverick and Adele are haunted by missing people: Adele’s husband, Miller, embezzled money and abandoned both his company and family, making his wife and children the targets of community shame, while an influencer/contestant named Chloe Miranda disappeared during Maverick’s previous competition, prompting reams of sinister speculation.  “Real danger had not been part of Adele’s plan,” but that soon becomes unavoidable. Pages turn quickly as Unger’s snappy prose explores a multitude of viewpoints, creating a spiderweb of subplots that include the FBI’s investigation into Miller’s disappearance and the increasing financial, corporate and interpersonal pressures that threaten to destroy Maverick and his company. The dynamics between Adele and her children are the most compelling, and throughout, Unger explores the increasingly blurry lines that various characters navigate between the online and offline worlds. While Adele and her opponents search for strategic places to hide, the real hide-and-seek turns out to be the many secrets—including deadly ones—concealed by a number of the novel’s characters. The thrills are nonstop in Close Your Eyes and Count to 10, and while the many narrators occasionally result in a somewhat disjointed feel, the windmilling foci of attention accurately mirror today’s compulsive online experience.