These Deadly Games by Diana Urban

e-Audio, 10:27:09
Narrated by: Kate Rudd
Release Date: February 1, 2022
Published by: Macmillan Audio
Read from: March 12-16, 2022
Stand-alone
Source: Library
TW: Allergy related death, accidental death, violence, death of parents, car accident deaths
For Readers Interested In: Thrillers, Mysteries, contemporary, Realistic Fiction, YA

      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.

*MY THOUGHTS*

I kinda kept this one on the back burner because if I remember correctly, I DNFed her debut because of the drug usage in it. But someone close to me read this one first and said give it a try. I did, and I’m so thankful now. This is so good and I almost missed out.

Crystal Donovan is a gamer through and through. But when she gets a video of her sister bound and gagged with the instructions to make sure she plays a new game. Their game. She knows she doesn’t have a choice but to do what they say, but her idea of a game is very different than the deadly series of events that begin to happen because she follows out their tasks. Will she get her sister back? Will this end the way she wants it to?

I REALLY liked this! Her debut was boring and just not my cup of tea. If I remember correctly, I DNF’ed it. But as a true thriller lover, I knew I had to give this author another try. And lo and behold, this is one of my faves of the year so far. The action in this was NON-STOP. I mean from like chapter 1 it’s immediately giving clues and context, so pay attention! And listen, my adrenaline while I was reading this was always sky high! Like I’m so serious even at the end when all the secrets are out, there’s more left for Crystal to do and I was STILL on the edge of my seat. I was not expecting a full 180 like this, but I’m glad that’s what it was!

The mystery itself was cool but also terrifying. Having a gamer husband, I can only hope that he never encounters a game like this, and if he does, that he is as good at it as Crystal is. Because she beasted it. And as someone else who has made other things her entire personality, I fully stand with how she inserted herself into the situation and solved things that way. If there ever comes a time when I have to think like a main character, I only hope I can do it as good as Crystal did when she was channeling a game master.

There were some things about this that stopped this from being perfect for me. Like the predictability. I didn’t understand how she didn’t know it was faked? Like if they had faked all that other stuff, it should’ve tipped her off that that could be faked too. And listen, I know it’s not going to bother everyone, but as someone with a peanut allergy, I hate when they’re mentioned in books because it always means that person is going to die. I don’t always want to see someone with a nut allergy die. Yes we have to be extra careful, and yes we carry Epipens, and yes our allergy is deadly, but there are others out there also. I hate that as soon as I heard (read? lol) he had a peanut allergy I immediately thought, “he’s going to be one who dies.” Like can we stop always killing off my people?

This book totally came out of left field, but I hella enjoyed it! Definitely gave proof to the fact that not every book may be for every reader, but cancelling them because you didn’t like the first one? No. (Unless its racist or bigoted in some way, which her last one was not.)

Overall, I give this