Ten by Gretchen McNeil

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Three-day weekend. House party.
White Rock House on Henry Island.
You do NOT want to miss it.
It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives—an exclusive house party on Henry Island. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their reasons for being there (which involve T.J., the school’s most eligible bachelor) and look forward to three glorious days of boys, booze and fun-filled luxury.
But what they expect is definitely not what they get, and what starts out as fun turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine.
Suddenly people are dying, and with a storm raging, the teens are cut off from the outside world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine?
This book was magnificent. I read Ten late at night in one sitting, and was completely engrossed in it the whole way through. Ten is like a horror movie if you made it into a book. Some parts are a bit cheesy and melodramatic, but it’s still scary and you love it.
In the beginning of the novel, I kept getting the characters messed up- which was a big problem. However, after awhile it got easier to tell them all apart. I found myself empathizing with the characters as more and more of them started dying, even though we don’t get to spend much time with some of them. After awhile, it even became a sort of game for me to see how the next one would go (that sentence sounds totally morbid, oops). That being said, Ten still scared me.
I get frightened easily, so I had some inhibitions going into Ten. I wanted to read it, but was afraid to- however I was moderating a book festival panel with Gretchen on it, so I had to read the novel. I’m glad I read it, but boy oh boy it scared me. I kept having to stop every few chapters and remind myself that it’s a book.
Though I lost a good amount of sleep to Ten, I’m really glad I read it. Ten is a well written novel that you won’t be able to put down.
FTC- Received from publisher/author.