Title: These Deadly Games.
Author: Diana Urban.
Format: Audiobook.
Publisher: Wednesday Books.
Page count: 416.
Release day: February 1st 2022.
Genre: YA, Thriller, Mystery.
Rating: 3 stars.
Rating:
Characters: 6/10
Atmosphere: 7/10
Writing: 8/10
Plot: 6/10
Intrigue: 7/10
Logic: 5/10
Enjoyment: 6/10
Average: 6.43
My thoughts:
I really enjoyed Diana Urban’s previous release, All Your Twisted Secrets, so I really wanted to check this one out. Also the synopsis sounded very interesting.
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book, with Crystal having to play games, so she can get her sister back. In the beginning these games were quite mild, and fun. But at a certain point I think the games were going a bit far and a bit unrealistic. I think around 2/3 this book was taking it too far for me. I also started to dislike the way Crystal was thinking about these games.
In the beginning I really enjoyed Crystal and her friends. She and her friends were competing each other to see which 5 of the 6 friends were going to compete in this online gaming competition. I liked this setting, and I really liked their approach of choosing. But of course playing this game made them distrust each other, since all of them wanted to compete and had their own reasons for this. This also made it easy for the reader to suspect everyone for kidnapping Crystals sister.
The plot was all about games, and mainly the ‘games’ Crystal had to play to free her sister. This made sure she often had to make decisions between her sister and her friends.
Once the games became more extreme. I started to dislike Crystal more and more. I understand that making certain decisions was hard, but what she did was quite unrealistic and some point.
I did guess the person behind the kidnapping pretty early on, not the reasoning behind it though. But of course I would have liked to not guess it, or later on in the book!
I loved the writing and really enjoyed the audiobook. It was also a quite intriguing book, since I kept wanting to continue!
I definitely preferred her previous book over this one, but I’m still interested in what she will release next!
All your Twisted Secrets – review!