THE PLOT: ‘Their Vicious Games’ by Joelle Wellington is a young adult thriller. Adina Walker is a scholarship student at an elite school for the rich and powerful. When a fight with a former friend leads to her Ivy League college acceptance being revoked, Adina’s world falls apart. Until she’s invited to ‘The Finish’. This annual competition hosted by a power family (the Remingtons) is designed to weed out the best and brightest girls. Adina knows winning means getting her college acceptance back and a full ride. But Adina doesn’t know that this year’s contestants will start to die…

RATING: With the elite world of ‘Gossip Girl’ and the deadly competition of ‘The Hunger Games’, this book is a rollercoaster. This is not a hugely complicated or emotional book but it does one of the hardest things an author can do – it delivers on the promise of the premise. It’s fast paced and filled with twists, a perfect example of its genre. The supporting characters are fun and likeable, and the villains are pretentious and detestable. Yes, you need to suspend disbelief but the underlying themes about race and class makes this book a great social commentary. So, if you like the sound of this one, don’t hesitate to buy it. It’s exactly the type of entertaining young adult novel we all need in our lives.

GOOD BITS: This book is very plot driven and I am here for it. I was so addicted; I literally could not stop reading because I needed to know if my theories about the murderers and ending would come true (I was 90% wrong lol). The range of characters is exactly what you’d expect from a modern YA, with diversity in race and sexual orientation (as far as the plot/setting allows). My favourite character is Saint and yours will be too – she’s a badass from Beijing. And despite the exaggerated plot (necessary for entertainment purposes) the underlying themes are depressingly relevant to the world of capitalist privilege we all endure, so it’s weirdly relatable.

NOT SO GOOD BITS: Oh, Adina. Once the stakes of ‘The Finish’ were established, I kept wanting her to wise up but she makes some questionable decisions. Every time she vowed that she was on her guard, she would reveal information to the wrong person or act rashly. This made sense with her characterisation and there were nice realistic touches, like learning to shoot and aim for the leg, which balanced out her bad choices. The villains were also a bit like caricatures of awful billionaires but this was slightly nuanced with Pen, Esme, Leighton and Graham, so it doesn’t feel too heavy handed.

OVERALL: I’d recommend this book to lovers of ‘Ace of Spades’ by Faridah Abike Iyimide, ‘The Inheritance Games’ by Jennifer Lynn Barnes and ‘Someone Had to Do It’ by Amber and Danielle Brown. Thank you to Tandem Collective who gave me a #gifted copy as part of their readalong with the author. This book is out on 27^th July 2023 and is available to order on my bookshop.org profile.