Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 is a standalone survival thriller by Lisa Unger. Adele Crane is buried in debt and raising two teenagers alone after her husband embezzled a fortune and vanished. When her son finds a casting call for an extreme televised game of hide-and-seek on an isolated island, with a million-dollar prize, Adele applies and is accepted, and then begins receiving anonymous messages telling her to stay away.

The contestants gather on Falcão, a Portuguese island dominated by a decaying hotel awaiting demolition, under the direction of charismatic adventurer and influencer Maverick Dillan. A woman who lives on the island warns them off. A tropical storm closes in. The production's own crew is fracturing, and the contest gives way to a straightforward fight to survive the island, the weather and one another.

Unger works her familiar territory here: ordinary people under financial and moral pressure, a claustrophobic setting, and the question of what a person will agree to when they are out of other options.