The Book:
These Deadly Games by Diana Urban
Published February 1, 2022 by Wednesday Books
Date read: October 29, 2023
The Characters:
Crystal
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
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.
How did These Deadly Games end?
The Reveal:
When the friend group was younger (10 I think), they had another member, Brent. One night they decided to sneak out and play Manhunt, and after hours of searching, couldn’t find Brent. They thought he’d gone home because of a spat earlier in the night, so they went back to their sleepover and went to bed. In the morning, Brent was found dead in a neighbor’s storage shed. he had gotten trapped and suffocated, and the kids didn’t tell anyone he was missing in time to save him.
The Ending:
Dylan was Anonymous1. He was Brent’s older brother Andrew, back for revenge. Mattie really did die, but everyone else was okay. The sister had been at the camp all along, and Dylan just deepfaked her face onto videos of himself. Zoe (the hacker friend) was able to get information off of Dylan’s computer that exonerated Crystal. Dylan’s body wasn’t found in the house after it burned down.
I hope these These Deadly Games spoilers were helpful.
The Review:
My absolute refusal to read summaries strikes again! Well, “strikes” isn’t the right word, because I did enjoy this book. But I wasn’t expecting a YA thriller and I wasn’t expecting video games! Clearly, I knew nothing about this one, not even the publisher.
The book was good, though. I enjoyed the evil Anonymous1 sending Crystal tasks to complete to save her sister. The gaming aspect was fun and new-to-me. It was a fun, unique read that kept me interested!
I will say that YA thrillers always make me wonder where the heck these kids’ parents were, and this one was no exception. Sure, Crystal’s single mom worked long hours, but you’d think that she’d be a bit more protective of Crystal once certain things started happening to her friend group! Is the lack of parental supervision something these authors wished for as kids? Suspension of belief just for the story? Girl, just alert the police!
I’ll also say (minor spoilers, but this has been out for a year) that the bad guy was very obvious right from the beginning. So obvious that I thought he must be the red herring, and I was waiting for a better twist. His identity, connection, motivation, nothing was a surprise. I do read a ton of thrillers, though, so the intended audience might not pin down the identity so easily.
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