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A review by gggina13
These Deadly Games by Diana Urban
3.0
This was a perfectly fine YA thriller and I think it's on the more well-done side of YA thrillers tbh.
Crystal and her friends are novice streamers and they spend a lot of time playing a competitive video game, and are gearing up to enter a competition the next weekend. But before they get to that, Crystal has to drop her little sister off at school for an off-the-grid ski trip. She drops her off with no issue. Until she gets a message a little bit later that contains a picture of her sister, kidnapped, with the sender blackmailing her into doing tasks. If she doesn't do the tasks, it means danger- or worse- for her sister.
What happens next is Crystal following an increasingly dangerous list of tasks that put her friends at risk. As the story unravels, something that happened to Crystal and her friends at 11 is slowly revealed. It's something kind of... not good lol and Crystal wonders if it may be linked to what's happening to her now. But she doesn't know who's behind it, and there's quite a lot of options.
The stakes in this story get really high, almost uncomfortably so. The big friend group means that there is a lot of people that bad things can happen to!!
There's also some issues in the story, some that feel just a little shoehorned in. Crystal's mom is poor because their dad left. He wasn't always abusive, but he started drinking after his job went south, and drinking turned him abusive, and eventually he left. His leaving is treated as a mini mystery with a reveal later on in the book about what really happened. Crystal's best friend Kiki had an eating disorder, which seems to only be mentioned for some PC credit. I'm pretty sure Kiki being Asian American is the only diversity in the story, and it's used as a plot point because a "troll" comments on their streams asking if Kiki's boyfriend is only dating her because he has a fetish.
I'm not the biggest fan of Crystal's story line with her dad, only because of the end of it. The representation is good, the way her mom just deals with it and tries to explain it away is good, and the way she fears her father and he tries to guilt her for it is good. But, it may reflect some peoples' stories but it just didn't sit right with me.
I also am not the biggest fan of.
But overall, especially reviewing this in the scope of teen readers, it doesn't feel extremely harmful in any way, and the mystery is pretty enticing. It's a good comparison title for One of Us is Lying. This might not be my very first thriller recommendation for a kid who asked, but I wouldn't feel bad recommending it, either.
Crystal and her friends are novice streamers and they spend a lot of time playing a competitive video game, and are gearing up to enter a competition the next weekend. But before they get to that, Crystal has to drop her little sister off at school for an off-the-grid ski trip. She drops her off with no issue. Until she gets a message a little bit later that contains a picture of her sister, kidnapped, with the sender blackmailing her into doing tasks. If she doesn't do the tasks, it means danger- or worse- for her sister.
What happens next is Crystal following an increasingly dangerous list of tasks that put her friends at risk. As the story unravels, something that happened to Crystal and her friends at 11 is slowly revealed. It's something kind of... not good lol and Crystal wonders if it may be linked to what's happening to her now. But she doesn't know who's behind it, and there's quite a lot of options.
The stakes in this story get really high, almost uncomfortably so. The big friend group means that there is a lot of people that bad things can happen to!!
There's also some issues in the story, some that feel just a little shoehorned in. Crystal's mom is poor because their dad left. He wasn't always abusive, but he started drinking after his job went south, and drinking turned him abusive, and eventually he left. His leaving is treated as a mini mystery with a reveal later on in the book about what really happened. Crystal's best friend Kiki had an eating disorder, which seems to only be mentioned for some PC credit. I'm pretty sure Kiki being Asian American is the only diversity in the story, and it's used as a plot point because a "troll" comments on their streams asking if Kiki's boyfriend is only dating her because he has a fetish.
I'm not the biggest fan of Crystal's story line with her dad, only because of the end of it. The representation is good, the way her mom just deals with it and tries to explain it away is good, and the way she fears her father and he tries to guilt her for it is good. But
Spoiler
in the end he calls and says "I've been sober the past few months and I feel so bad for what I did!! Love ya'll" and she's like :) which I find a little insulting tbhI also am not the biggest fan of
Spoiler
fucking mysteries where the bad guy turns out to be the guy the main character is romantically interested in. It's very trite and also derivative of the only true valid instance of this story: the 1996 horror classic film Scream. It's so frustrating and sort of demeaning to teen girls to watch them be so vulnerable and then get shit on or like literally have a murder attempt from their boyfriend???? Why do we never get a girl who manipulates boys? Like idk it's a decent real-life parallel I guess bc men do manipulate us all the time but why can't our fiction be our escapism once in a while lmaoBut overall, especially reviewing this in the scope of teen readers, it doesn't feel extremely harmful in any way, and the mystery is pretty enticing. It's a good comparison title for One of Us is Lying. This might not be my very first thriller recommendation for a kid who asked, but I wouldn't feel bad recommending it, either.