Review: "Who's All Going (to Die)?" by Lisa Springer

Who's All Going (to Die)? by Lisa Springer
Published September 2025 via Delacorte Press
★★★

It should have been the perfect getaway—Ariana has been invited to the soft opening of a new wellness retreat on a secluded island. She's brought her best friends along, and she's looking forward to a break.

That is...until a girl disappears, and nobody seems concerned. And then the bodies start to pile up...

I loved Springer's first book (nice and gory) and was looking forward to this one, since it promised more gore (I don't know, man, sometimes my reading habits are weird) plus a pretentious-as-hell wellness-culture island, which is always good fun. Ariana's sharp enough to notice early on that things aren't...quite...right...and that, for example, the newish friend who invited her to take part seems to have invited almost exclusively newish friends. Ariana seems to have at least some sort of online following (back to this in a moment), but she's not in this to build her profile; she just wants a free week of vacation and pampering. She does not want to be pressured into spending money that she doesn't really have to "level up" her wellness commitment, or her commitment to this specific brand of wellness.

The influencer thing ended up confusing me more than anything, though. None of Ariana's circle seems to be online-famous, though they (and everyone else) are encouraged to post a lot about their experience; they're given hashtags to use, and because the retreat already has some big names behind it, those posts get a lot of engagement. But: the entire influencer-and-people-posting-things seems to disappear as soon as the bodies start to pile up, and in an odd way that took me out of the story. Like...of course a bunch of teenagers, some of whom seem to want to be influencers proper, are going to post (and post a lot, and post dramatically) when somebody dies. They're also going to post dramatic things when, e.g., they're forced to spend hours doing manual labor in harsh conditions. The potential for the retreat getting a bunch of very publicity, very quickly, is huge with so many of the book's plot points...but that's just dropped. I think I would have preferred some kind of semi-convoluted plot point about there being no reception or wifi on the island (bonus: can't contact anyone to GTFO), so nothing can be posted until later (and the retreat people would still have time to do damage control)...and maybe something like an extensive nondisclosure agreement that most teenagers (most adults!) wouldn't bother to read before signing.

Ariana is also a little inconsistent in what she does with her information. She realizes early on that something is awry...but that doesn't stop her from trying out activities with high potential for someone to make something go wrong. It doesn't stop her from wearing the smartwatch that the retreat has assigned her and that can track her movements. It doesn't stop her from openly challenging people—and while she's generally right, she'd have been much safer if she smiled and nodded and raised hell later, when back in safety.

By the end of the book it's hard to imagine that this wellness retreat ever would have made it past the first round of visitor-guests; there's just too much violence and too many dangerous "treatments" and too much unrelenting pressure to spend spend spend. No subtlety to it—am I being overly optimistic to think that more people would share Ariana's skepticism and distaste for the spend spend spend pressure? Especially when that pressure repeats over and over (and this is a bunch of teenagers, most of whom are not paying their own bills...surely some of them think that they should check with their parents)? Still a very fun read, but as usual I struggled to suspend my disbelief.