Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own. 

 

Book: Their Vicious Games 

 

Author: Joelle Wellington 

 

Book Series: Standalone 

 

Rating: 5/5 

 

Diversity: Black MC and characters 

 

Recommended For...: young adult readers, mystery, thriller, psychological horror 

 

Publication Date: July 25, 2023 

 

Genre: YA Mystery Thriller 

 

Age Relevance: 14+ (language, racism, slight sexual lingo, alcohol consumption, death, panic attack, religion, slight blood gore) 

 

Explanation of Above: There are a few sentences with strong language used. One of the themes of the book is racism and that is shown throughout the book. There are a couple of instances where there is some slight sexual lingo such as in “who’s d--- did you suck”, but this is nothing that they shouldn’t be hearing at school. There are a couple of scenes of underage alcohol consumption shown and mentioned. Death and slight blood gore are shown in the book. There is a panic attack shown in the book. There is slight talk about Christianity in the book. 

 

Publisher: Simon and Schuster 

 

Pages: 416 

 

Synopsis: A Black teen desperate to regain her Ivy League acceptance enters an elite competition only to discover the stakes aren’t just high, they’re deadly, in this searing thriller that’s Ace of Spades meets Squid Game with a sprinkling of The Bachelor. You must work twice as hard to get half as much. Adina Walker has known this the entire time she’s been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy—a school for the rich (and mostly white) upper class of New England. It’s why she works so hard to be perfect and above reproach, no matter what she must force beneath the surface. Even one slip can cost you everything. And it does. One fight, one moment of lost control, leaves Adina blacklisted from her top choice Ivy League college and any other. Her only chance to regain the future she’s sacrificed everything for is the Finish, a high-stakes contest sponsored by Edgewater’s founding family in which twelve young, ambitious women with exceptional promise are selected to compete in three mysterious events: the Ride, the Raid, and the Royale. The winner will be granted entry into the fold of the Remington family, whose wealth and power can open any door. But when she arrives at the Finish, Adina quickly gets the feeling that something isn’t quite right with both the Remingtons and her competition, and soon it becomes clear that this larger-than-life prize can only come at an even greater cost. Because the Finish’s stakes aren’t just make or break… they’re life and death. Adina knows the deck is stacked against her—it always has been—so maybe the only way to survive their vicious games is for her to change the rules. 

 

Review: I really liked this book overall. I thought that the book reminded me a lot of Ready or Not in terms of how kinda evil the whole family was with the exception of maybe a couple of them, but further in how cult-like some family traditions are and can be and how hard it can be for an outsider to enter into the family. This is further exuberated by the racism that persists by this family in the book, which I thought could open up a lot of discussion among teens about how to best dismantle old, racist practices not only in families but in societal structures as well. The book also had a dark evil-er The Selection feel to it in how this “competition” was to select someone to be brought into the family. In short, I think this book is a psychological horror YA masterpiece. I think the book has so many undertones that I don’t think I can even begin to fathom or properly discuss and I think the book is one of those that can be a great aide in discussion on societal issues that should be taught in school. 

 

The only issue I had with the book is that it was a bit of a quick pace in a few places, but other than that I absolutely loved this book. 

 

Verdict: A bloody competition to win a scholarship but also to be brought into a family? I’m in. Highly recommend!