This bookish meme tells the blogosphere what we’re waiting patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) for! It’s hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine!
A Black teen desperate to regain her Ivy League acceptance enters an elite competition only to discover the stakes aren’t just high, they’re deadly, in this searing thriller that’s Ace of Spades meets Squid Game with a sprinkling of The Bachelor.
You must work twice as hard to get half as much.
Adina Walker has known this the entire time she’s been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy—a school for the rich (and mostly white) upper class of New England. It’s why she works so hard to be perfect and above reproach, no matter what she must force beneath the surface. Even one slip can cost you everything.
And it does. One fight, one moment of lost control, leaves Adina blacklisted from her top choice Ivy League college and any other. Her only chance to regain the future she’s sacrificed everything for is the Finish, a high-stakes contest sponsored by Edgewater’s founding family in which twelve young, ambitious women with exceptional promise are selected to compete in three mysterious events: the Ride, the Raid, and the Royale. The winner will be granted entry into the fold of the Remington family, whose wealth and power can open any door.
But when she arrives at the Finish, Adina quickly gets the feeling that something isn’t quite right with both the Remingtons and her competition, and soon it becomes clear that this larger-than-life prize can only come at an even greater cost. Because the Finish’s stakes aren’t just make or break…they’re life and death.
Adina knows the deck is stacked against her—it always has been—so maybe the only way to survive their vicious games is for her to change the rules.
Published by: Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers
Expected Publication: July 25, 2023
Why I’m Waiting: Not gonna lie, I thought this was the sequel to a book I had DNFed earlier this year so I didn’t pay much attention to it once the cover dropped. But then I realized the person’s hand was Black, so maybe I should read the synopsis…… And what do you know, it wasn’t that book’s synopsis. It actually sounded hella good and the cover is amazing. So then I just got hella excited about the book overall because wtf even is ” Ace of Spades meets Squid Game with a sprinkling of The Bachelor.” This sounds like every person in this book is going to be met with disaster and I’m here for it lmao
What about you? Have you ever judged a book by it’s cover? Will you read this one? Let me know in the comments!