Review: Make it Out Alive by Allison Brennan

Make it Out Alive (Quinn & Costa, #7)

by Allison Brennan

Release Date: January 27, 2026

2026 Hanover Square Press

Ebook ARC; 392 Pages

ISBN: 978-1335001412

ASIN:  ‎ B0F7XJN4YP

Audiobook: B0FN9DVLKX

Genre: Fiction / Mystery

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

3 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

Three newlywed couples have disappeared from an exclusive resort in Florida, only to turn up dead soon after. With the location and the similarities between the female victims as their only leads, it’s up to the FBI Mobile Response Team to catch a serial killer before anyone else ends up dead. And they have the perfect bait—Detective Kara Quinn, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the targeted women.

Undercover as newlyweds pretending to enjoy their honeymoon, Kara and FBI Agent Matt Costa set a flawless trap. When their plan works and they arrest the predator, Matt sends the rest of the team home so he and Kara can have the weekend for some much-needed R&R. But on Monday morning, the couple doesn’t show up to work, and the MRT learns they never checked out of their hotel.

 

My Thoughts

Make it Out Alive is the seventh installment in the Quinn & Costa Thriller series, and while it had a decent premise, there was definitely something missing in this one, that something that usually keeps me glued to the pages and flipping quickly because of the high level of tension.  While I really enjoyed the locked-room scenario that played out and forced Quinn and Costa to examine their feelings for each other, the chapters with the killers just made me roll my eyes and I definitely didn't buy into the reasons for why they did what they did.   

 

By the time we hit the seventh book, the character development sort of stalls, and unfortunately, that was the case in this book.  The fact there is still tension between Kara and one of the other team members after all these books drives me wild, and that same profiler is constantly questioning herself because of what happened all those years ago.  I understand the trauma she went through, but she is supposed to be a professional so maybe behave like one?  

 

The plot was a bit disjointed in this one as you were thrown into the end of an investigation and really had no idea what was going on when the book began.  I'm not opposed to being thrown into an investigation this way, but the way it was done was a bit weird and threw me off a bit.  The team thinks it has its killer, sends everyone home, then suddenly Matt and Kara go missing so they realize the profile was off and have to do an emergency regroup to find out what happened to Matt and Kara.  Not implausible, but the way it happened made me realize I was reading a different type of book than the previous ones and had to just go along for the ride.  Unfortunately, you also knew who the culprit was right from the beginning and this didn't help the tension of the story.  And I really disliked the POV chapters of the killer. It really felt like the author was fishing really deep to come up with reasons for why the killer did what they did and I couldn't help but roll my eyes during their chapters.  I don't know what it is with the use of a locked-room type scenario lately, but while I enjoyed it, it just seemed so far=fetched for this series considering the deep investigations the author presented in previous books.  

 

Verdict

Make it Out Alive is definitely not my favourite book of this series due to the disjointedness of the story as well as poor reasons from the killer's viewpoint.  I don't have to like a killer or agree with what they did, but the reasons do need to be somewhat believable and for me, these were sitting on the edge of 'rolling my eyeballs into the back of head' type of reasons. I could even ignore the neediness of a professional profiler who whines whenever anyone questions her report, but I couldn't ignore the lack of tension or suspense nor the fact this required quite a suspension of belief to get through.  Will I continue to read the series? Yes, because I really enjoyed the earlier books in this series and hope the next one will have more relatable characters and more intriguing reasons for doing what they do.