49 pages • 1 hour read
Natalie D. RichardsFive Total Strangers
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 25-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
Everyone gets back in the SUV. Mira is in shock, frightened by the latest developments. Brecken tells Harper she needs to turn the SUV around, but she must be careful because of the ditches on either side of the road. At the same time, Kayla continues to question Brecken about his phone call. He finally tells everyone that that he has to change majors at college because he’s failing his pre-med classes and that his parents will be furious because medicine has been the family business for generations.
Harper gets the SUV pointed in the right direction and begins to travel according to directions Brecken gives her. When she comes to a road that is covered in snow, Harper wants to turn around again, but Josh and Brecken both push her to continue. In fact, Josh claims that he saw this particular road on his phone earlier and knows that it hits the highway at some point, and Kayla supports his opinion. Harper reluctantly agrees to go forward but almost immediately drives into a ditch, causing the SUV to tip to the left.
Chapter 26 Summary
The group slowly gets out of the car and realizes the only way they’re going anywhere is if they’re towed. Josh suggests they hike until they find someone, but Mira points out that he’s on crutches. Everyone starts to argue again. Mira wanders away and spots a line of houses down a slope. Mira returns to the SUV to tell everyone, but the only one not busy is Josh. She explains it to him and suggests she go down to get help. Josh insists on taking a look despite his knee injury. Mira returns to the SUV to get her gloves. When she opens her bag, she finds an envelope inside filled with the missing items, including her cellphone (now broken) and a stack of letters. Mira reads part of the most recent letter and knows she is right to be afraid.
An undated anonymous letter, apparently written during the car ride, tells Mira she’s not going home: The writer will take her somewhere private in the mountains where she’ll have to see them.
Chapter 27 Summary
In Mira’s panicked mind, she connects an address on the letters and the Seaspun Gallery, where she showed a few paintings. She also connects some of the words in the letters with a few things Brecken has said. Kayla finds Mira with the missing items and begins looking for her lost item, but it isn’t there. Mira tells Kayla that Brecken is behind everything and she’s going to leave before he can do anything else. Mira urges Kayla to come with her. Kayla and Mira rush to where Josh is waiting and tell him what they found. Mira again insists they need to get out of there, though she knows Josh can’t hike with his bad leg. Josh encourages Mira and Kayla to go and bring help back. Mira and Kayla start down the slope, but then Kayla pushes Mira down and returns up the slope, where Mira watches a man give Kayla a bottle of pills. Mira assumes it is Brecken, but when he comes into view, she sees it’s Josh.
Chapter 28 Summary
Josh charges toward Mira as she scrambles to stand. He demands to know if she “see[s] [him] now” (284). Mira honestly doesn’t remember seeing Josh at the gallery, but it doesn’t matter; he snags her sleeve and presses a knife against her arm. He warns her not to fight, but Mira does. They fall and Mira is stabbed in the arm. Mira kicks him, grabs the knife, and runs back to the SUV, where Harper confronts her, raising the shovel high in the air.
Chapter 29 Summary
Kayla has disappeared. Brecken and Harper demand to know what is happening and Mira tries to explain, but it’s clear they don’t believe her. Mira tells them to look at the letters she left at the SUV. Brecken goes to find the letters. Josh appears at the crest of the slope and tells Harper that Mira attacked him and is behind all the things that have happened. Harper clearly doesn’t know whom to believe. Josh lunges for the knife that Mira dropped in the snow. Mira jumps for the knife but trips. Josh cuts her palm. Brecken returns with the letters and grabs the shovel, hitting Josh on the head.
Chapter 30 Summary
The man in the yellow hat shows up with a man in an SUV to offer help. Brecken and Harper explain everything to the two men, and the driver of the SUV calls the police. Mira works out that Kayla was helping Josh because he was giving her some sort of pills, first at the gas station and later at the bar. Mira is taken to a hospital, where she later wakes to find her mother sitting beside her. Mira is surprised that her mother is calm. Mira’s mother explains that she didn’t tell Mira about her impending divorce because she felt like Mira had been ignoring her own grief over the past year to care for her. She didn’t want to give Mira another reason to put off dealing with her own issues. Mira’s mother also suggests that Mira had trouble trusting her instincts because she is distracted by her grief.
Chapters 25-30 Analysis
Kayla calls out Brecken and Mira seems to think this proves his guilt, but Brecken has a reasonable explanation for a phone call in which he appeared to be confessing something. Brecken now emerges as a young man with realistic and age-typical problems, explaining not only his strange phone conversation, but also his support of Harper, who is struggling with similar issues. However, the lack of trust has grown to a point that Mira finds it difficult to backtrack.
Once again, the group faces a decision about whether to turn around or continue down a road that is clearly clogged with snow. Like the decision about I-80, it appears to be a group discussion, but Josh and Brecken are the loudest voices, encouraging Harper to continue driving on the snowy road. This proves to be a disaster, just like the decision to go up to I-80, ending with them all stranded on the side of the road and the SUV stuck in a ditch. The letters have foreshadowed this moment: The writer promised to get Mira isolated in the mountains to mete out punishment for not “seeing” him.
Mira belatedly tries to do as her father said, finding a row of distant houses that may be safe. Her distrust of Brecken and Harper increases her trust in Josh, as she has no one else to turn to. When Mira discovers that someone has put the missing items and the letters in her bag and reads enough to understand that someone is obsessed with her, she goes to Josh. Mira has become wrapped up in her own narrative about Brecken, unable to see him for who he is.
Kayla’s apology gains context when Mira and Kayla head out to find help and Kayla pushes Mira. As Mira watches Josh give drugs to Kayla, his identity as stalker is all but revealed; it is confirmed when he attacks Mira. These events pull together all the novel’s foreshadowing, allowing the reader to see all of Josh’s manipulative actions in their appropriate light.
The fight between Mira and Josh is a culmination of Richards’ use of the intelligent but mentally ill criminal trope. Josh’s obsession with Mira, which he has nursed, has put Mira in great danger. Ultimately, Brecken proves to be a hero when he shows trust in Mira’s claims and stops Josh from hurting her. In a moment of irony, the man in the yellow hat, whom Mira has feared throughout the novel, also becomes a hero when he arrives on the scene to offer the SUV occupants help. This underscores the unreliability of Mira’s narration: She cannot see the situation clearly through her fears and assumptions.
The denouement wraps up the theme of Unexplored Grief when Mira wakes in the hospital to find that her mother is calm despite the anniversary of Phoebe’s death and her impending divorce. Mira’s unreliable narration and her misinterpretation of the danger around her make sense when seen in the context of her refusal to deal with her own grief. Kayla disappears, and Richards does not explain what happens to Brecken and Harper in the aftermath of their ordeal. However, Mira is home safe, having succeeded in achieving the goal she set out to achieve at the beginning of the novel.
