Blog Tour: Those Who Prey by Jennifer Moffett (Interview + Review + Giveaway!)

Item: Those Who Prey
Rating: 5
Author: Kaity

Posted November 5, 2020 by Kaity in Book Review, Book Tours, Bookstagram, Giveaways, Interviews, Reviews / 1 Comment

Happy Thursday and welcome to my stop on the THOSE WHO PREY blog tour! I’m so excited because today I have an interview with Jennifer Moffett to share with you, AND my review of the book! This book is truly amazing and I’m so so excited to for you to find out more about it, PLUS enter for a chance to win a copy!

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Those Who Prey by Jennifer Moffett
Published on November 10, 2020 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Genres: YA, Historical Fiction, Thriller
Pages: 416
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
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College life isn’t what Emily expected.
She expected to spend freshman year strolling through the ivy-covered campus with new friends, finally feeling like she belonged. Instead, she walks the campus alone, still not having found her place or her people so far away from home.
But then the Kingdom finds her.
The Kingdom, an exclusive on-campus group, offers everything Emily expected of college and more: acceptance, friends, a potential boyfriend, and a chance to spend the summer in Italy on a mission trip. But the trip is not what she thought it would be. Emily and the others are stripped of their passports and money. They’re cut off from their families back home. The Kingdom’s practices become increasingly manipulative and dangerous.
And someone ends up dead.
At times unsettling and always riveting, Those Who Prey looks at the allure of cult life, while questioning just how far we’re willing to go to find where we belong.

Sometimes I don’t have a whole lot to say about books, so I’ve created Rapid Fire Reviews as a quick and fun way to get my opinion out without repeating myself and boring you! Here we go!

DID I LIKE IT?

OH MY GOD YES!

FAVORITE CHARACTER?

Emily! I feel like we really got to see an entire character arc for her, and it was just mind blowing, everything that she went through. I think she needs to go spend some time in a rom com now though, just to feel better about everything that happened.

WILL I RE-READ IT?

Probably? I don’t tend to reread thrillers that much because the suspense is something I actually like for those, but it was so good that I might anyway!

THREE WORDS TO DESCRIBE THE BOOK

cults, manipulation, suspense

QUICK THOUGHTS

I really loved the chapter dividers, which were little facts and definitions about cults and manipulation. It was really interesting to see what they were doing to manipulate her as they were doing it.

wow, this cover really grabs my attention when I look at it! I like that it’s a crowd moving forward with just one girl turning around to look at the reader. I’m really curious to know if the crowd is meant to represent the crowds of Boston or the Kingdom? Either way, the contrast with Emily (I’m assuming it’s Emily at least) looking back while everyone else just marches on is REALLY good and REALLY meaningful to the book! Overall, I love this cover, and I’m giving it 8.5/10 stars!

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If you could trade lives with any YA character for a day, who would it be and why? What about a week? A month, year, or forever?

Considering most YA characters have to overcome a lot of uncomfortable situations, that’s a tricky choice. A day? Definitely anyone who can do magic. Longterm? Witches—they’re totally badass. Most recently, I loved Immanuelle from The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson.

What would you do if you spent the day with Emily? Where would you go to eat, hang out, relax, etc.?

We’d hang out on the Gulf Coast, where Emily is from and where I now live, eating shrimp tacos beachside and kayaking out to the islands.

If Emily were to hang out with characters from other YA books, who would they be and why?

What a great question! When I read Liz Lawson’s The Lucky Ones, I told her I thought our main characters, May and Emily, would be really good friends. Same goes for Ali in Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf by Hayley Krischer. Emily and May and Ali share a drive for survival, even when things seem hopeless, and immeasurable resilience.

What was your favorite bit of research you ended up not using?

I did a lot of research on setting that didn’t make the final draft. Once we started editing, we had to cut descriptive details for pacing purposes. I tried to sneak tiny snippets back into different spots during the editing process though.

What is your favorite quote, scene, or moment from Those Who Prey?

I recently ran across a Goodreads review that pulled a quote from the book that I love because it describes leaving a cult.

“After you leave it, it feels like you’re lost, like someone led you into the depths of a labyrinth without a map, and then abandoned you to find your way out.”

Were there alternate endings you considered, or did you always know where the story was headed?

My characters led me to the ending, so I didn’t know where the story was headed when I first started. But once we got there, the ending felt completely inevitable, so I didn’t consider any alternate endings.

JENNIFER MOFFETT grew up in Arkansas, where she spent her childhood playing in creeks and climbing trees while dreaming up stories about faraway places. A college study abroad program sparked her lifelong passion for travel. After working in children’s television in New York City, she received an MA in Creative Writing and wrote book reviews for regional publications. Her short stories and poems have appeared in various literary journals, including New Orleans Review and descant. She teaches creative writing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where she enjoys kayaking, gardening, reading outdoors, and planning trips to new places (preferably with great local yarn shops and bookstores).

Her debut YA thriller, THOSE WHO PREY (Atheneum, Simon & Schuster), is about a shy college freshman who is seduced into joining a campus cult, leading her on a deadly mission trip to Italy.