Synopsis
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. 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.
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This book will be released on February 1, 2022. Pre-order it today!
Review
This YA psychological thriller might make you question what goes on in people’s minds! From the group of friends, to the “killer”, to the parents.
This is the first book by this author that I read and I was pulled into the story from the start as I watched this group of friends prepares for a gaming tournament yet a small twist in Crystal’s life changes her life forever. The story is primarily set in the present but there are some flashbacks to 5 years ago when a friend of Crystal’s goes missing. With those flashbacks, some of the twists might become apparent but not necessarily. This ragtag group of friends has mixed emotions when it comes to each other. Some get along great, and others have animosity towards each other. It makes you wonder why they hang around each other if they don’t like each other.
I have to wonder how I would react if I were in Crystal’s shoes and someone has kidnapped my sibling and says not to tell anyone. And then the tasks she has to perform seem innocuous at first but then become more and more dangerous, not necessarily to Crystal but her friends. Since the cast of characters is smaller, I wondered if it was someone we knew or not. I had some suspicions at first just because of timing, but I was wrong. I did determine who was behind it all but not until closer to the end. The twists kept me guessing until the very end.
And that ending? Did not expect that and makes me wonder, could there be another book that follows this one? Maybe, or we are just left to wonder how things play out for this group.
We give this a solid 4 paws up and if a psychological thriller is one of your go-to genres, then definitely check this one out.
About the Author
Diana Urban is an author of dark, twisty thrillers, including All Your Twisted Secrets (HarperTeen) and These Deadly Games (Wednesday Books, 2022). When she’s not torturing fictional characters, she works in digital marketing for startups. She lives with her husband and cat in Boston and enjoys reading, playing video games, fawning over cute animals, and looking at the beach from a safe distance.
