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Review: These Deadly Games by Diana Urban

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,
These Deadly Games by Diana Urban

These Deadly Games
Diana Urban
Wednesday Books
Published February 1, 2022

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About These Deadly Games

Let’s play a game.

You have 24 hours to win. If you break my rules, she dies. If you call the police, she dies. And if you tell your parents or anyone else, she dies.

Are you ready?

When Crystal Donavan gets a message on a mysterious app with a video of her little sister gagged and bound, she agrees to play the kidnapper’s game. At first, they make her complete bizarre tasks: steal a test and stuff it in a locker, bake brownies, make a prank call.

But then Crystal realizes each task is meant to hurt—and kill—her friends, one by one. But if she refuses to play, the kidnapper will kill her sister. Is someone trying to take her team out of the running for a gaming tournament? Or have they uncovered a secret from their past, and wants them to pay for what they did…

As Crystal makes the impossible choices between her friends and her sister, she must uncover the truth and find a way to outplay the kidnapper… before it’s too late.

Author of ALL YOUR TWISTED SECRETS, Diana Urban’s explosive sophomore novel, THESE DEADLY GAMES, will keep you riveted until the final twist is revealed.

My Review

I knew as soon as I started reading this book that it was going to be a tough one for me. It moves really quickly, and has a fairly large cast. Crystal and five of her close friends are on an esports team together preparing for a tournament game. Her mom and sister are important characters, plus a few other rivals and side characters. So there are a lot of moving parts to the story. I liked that.

What I found challenging, though, was connecting with Crystal. She seemed to have a lot of emotional contradictions. Sometimes conflicted characters– where they feel two opposing things simultaneously– are really gripping, but something about Crystal’s character just didn’t click with me. She blamed her mom for not getting help when her dad was abusing her, but blamed herself for her dad leaving.

Crystal had a conflict with one of her team members that didn’t really make sense to me, either. I didn’t really understand the stakes of the secret that Crystal and her friends kept from the past. I don’t know. The story didn’t hook me in the way that I wanted to.

I don’t know. Other than the character disconnect, I thought it was a pretty intense read, definitely something readers who like Karen McManus or R. L. Stine would like. THESE DEADLY GAMES reminded me a little bit of HOW WE FALL APART by Katie Zhao, so I think readers who enjoy those kinds of driven, fast-paced suspenseful stories will probably like this one a lot more than I did.

Content Notes for These Deadly Games

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Major characters are white. Crystal has panic attacks. One of her best friends is Asian American.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used pretty frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Some scenes reference Crystal’s dad beating her mom. More often they show Crystal noticing bruises on her mom’s body after a fight between her parents. Some video footage shows a girl tied up and being threatened or cut with a knife. Other situations of peril and serious accidents.

Drug Content
Crystal’s dad was an alcoholic, but he no longer lives with her family.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of THESE DEADLY GAMES in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Don’t Hate the Player by Alexis Nedd

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,

Don’t Hate the Player
Alexis Nedd
Bloomsbury YA
Published June 15, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Don’t Hate the Player

By day, Emilia is a field hockey star with a popular boyfriend and a mother obsessed with her academic future. But by night, she’s kicking virtual ass as the only female member of a highly competitive eSports team. Emilia has mastered the art of keeping her two worlds thriving, which hinges on them staying completely separate.

When a major eSports tournament comes to her city, Emilia is determined to prove herself to the male-dominated gaming community. But her perfectly balanced life is thrown for a loop when a member of a rival team—Jake—recognizes her . . .

From an exciting new talent, this sweet and charming YA romance will win the hearts of gamers and non-gamers alike.

My Review

Okay, to start with, the voice in this book is simply fantastic. The dialogue is funny and nerdy and I absolutely loved it. It was a super entertaining read.

DON’T HATE THE PLAYER follows two points of view: Jake’s and Emilia’s. Emilia’s chapters are all in first person, and Jake’s are a combination of third person narrative or chat logs from online conversations with his teammates. I liked that format a lot. The only time it felt a little strange to me was in the prologue, because it’s kind of recapping something that happened in the past between Jake and Emilia. Once I realized that all of Jake’s narrative sections were going to be written that way, I think it made more sense, but it was maybe just not what I expected from the opening? Like I said, once I got into the book, that opening made a lot more sense.

I liked a lot of the characters. They were each so unique that I could tell who was talking, and I loved that. I also loved the way their relationships with Emilia changed through the story. There’s a scene toward the end with her parents that I just LOVED.

One of the things I noticed is that I don’t think there are any good white girls in this book. It’s possible that I only noticed this because I read DON’T HATE THE PLAYER right after reading HANI AND ISHU’S GUIDE TO FAKE DATING and I noticed this same thing in that book, too.

That’s not a criticism. I think books are allowed to have zero good white girls. It was just a thing I noticed and wanted to sit with, you know? To think about what it’s like to read and enjoy a book that doesn’t include/feature a positive representation of myself. I think that’s a good thing to think about. I tried to think about how I’d feel about books if the only girls who looked like me acted like mean girl bullies. (Which is not the case for white characters by any stretch of the imagination, of course.) Anyway, it gave me some time to think about how critical good representation is when there aren’t a huge ton of stories featuring a particular community.

Another thing that I felt like this book did really well was to dive into some of the conversations about gaming behavior, specifically predatory and cruel behavior toward girls and female-presenting players. It doesn’t get deep in the gross stuff, but the story does not shy away from what it’s like to be a girl gamer. Additionally, I loved the way DON’T HATE THE PLAYER showcased the different relationship dynamics between players on team Unity and players on team Fury.

All in all, this book has a LOT to love. Reader who enjoy witty banter and rich characters will definitely want to give this one a read.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Emilia is Puerto Rican. Her best friend is Black. One minor character is transgender and a couple more are gay.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Romance/Sexual Content – Trigger warning for sexual bullying.
Kissing between boy and girl. Emilia recalls receiving unwanted sexual pictures in her messages. She also received messages saying people wanted to rape her.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
See above for bullying content. Most of the violence described in the book is video game violence. Emilia and Jake each play on a team of five who battle each other, trying to guard treasure and kill the opponent’s players using weapons and magic attacks.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of DON’T HATE THE PLAYER in exchange for my honest review.