These Deadly Games is one of the most addicting, well-plotted thrillers I’ve ever read. It’s unique in its presentation, the characters are likable, and I found myself genuinely surprised by the ending. Diana Urban’s debut wasn’t bad but it is her sophomore novel that showcases her brilliant writing abilities to their full extent.

This was a thrill ride from start to finish. Despite the fact that the title of this book is literally These Deadly Games, I wasn’t quite expecting just how dark it got. Some of what Anynomous1 told Crystal to do seemed innocent at first, and I couldn’t predict how terrible the endgame would be. This book is non-stop in its pace. Every time it seems like we get a breather, something new comes up and BAM! Back on that bullet train of death-defying games. My mind was theorizing whenever it got a chance but I still didn’t totally guess the ending.

Speaking of the ending…WOW. My heart was racing. There were so many twists and turns that even if I half-guessed one thing, it never played out the way I expected it to. I’m unsure if there’s going to be a sequel though? The last line especially felt a little bit open-ended. While there were a few moments throughout the story that had me rolling my eyes (y’all already know my thoughts on teenagers in thrillers) this is one of the most well-plotted books I’ve ever read. At this point, Diana Urban is on my list of favorite mystery/thriller authors, joining the ranks of Holly Jackson…and that’s it. That’s my list. It’s clearly very prestigious so if nothing else convinces you to read this book I hope that does.

My full review will be up on my blog closer to the publication date! Thank you so much Wednesday Books for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a fast-paced YA thriller with a gaming trope that was easy to get through due to it's creative storytelling that draws you in from the first sentence. While I did find some of the twists predictable, some came at a surprise and as a fan of YA psychological thrillers, I was invested in this one. I thought it was creative and unique and suspenseful without being over the top. Having not read another Diana Urban book, she created a fan out of me and I was pleasantly surprised with These Deadly Games.

Thank you Diana Urban, Wednesday books and Netgalley from this e-arc. Holy crap this book is fantastic. This is another amazing thriller debut from Diana Urban! This book instantly had me hooked and it was so incredibly fast paced and thrilling I didn’t want it to end. I will say I had like mad anxiety this entire book but it was so good. There were so many twists and turns I did not expect and some I did. I’m excited with myself because I managed to figure out who Anonymous was halfway through the book. I will say this book and the ending rocked me to my core. By the end of the book I’m like I don’t know what’s happening anymore and was so confused. But everything managed to work out in the end. I am so excited for this release and am so thankful I got to read it early. I will always highly recommend Diana’s books and can’t wait for what she writes next.

Thank you Diana Urban, Wednesday books and Netgalley from this e-arc. Holy crap this book is fantastic. This is another amazing thriller debut from Diana Urban! This book instantly had me hooked and it was so incredibly fast paced and thrilling I didn’t want it to end. I will say I had like mad anxiety this entire book but it was so good. There were so many twists and turns I did not expect and some I did. I’m excited with myself because I managed to figure out who Anonymous was halfway through the book. I will say this book and the ending rocked me to my core. By the end of the book I’m like I don’t know what’s happening anymore and was so confused. But everything managed to work out in the end. I am so excited for this release and am so thankful I got to read it early. I will always highly recommend Diana’s books and can’t wait for what she writes next.

A high stakes game with a deadly kidnapper. This YA thriller is filled with less than likeable characters and will keep you guessing the whole time. The premise is interesting and the story is executed well, it doesn't pack the punch of adult thrillers but it's ideal for its target demographic or people wanting to get a taste for thrillers. A fast, entertaining read

What would you do if an anonymous person sent you a message? “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 anyone she dies”.

Crystal Donavan spends her free time playing video games with her friends. She loves them so much, she’s entered a tournament with her five friends. The winner gets a big cash prize. This is all Crystal can focus on until she receives a disturbing message on an app with a video of her little sister tied up and gagged. She agrees to play the kidnappers game. At first there are strange tasks; steal a test, bake brownies, make a prank phone call.

However, things escalate quickly when Crystal realizes each task she is ordered to perform hurts and kills each of her friends. If she refuses to play, the kidnapper will keep playing on their own and her sister will die.

Who is this anonymous person? Are they a rival in the video game competition? Have they discovered a terrible secret from Crystals past and is seeking revenge?

With each “ding” of a message Crystal fears the worst. How will she choose between saving her friends or her sister? There’s only one last question; Are you ready to play?

I flew through this book! It was a crazy adrenaline fueled thrill ride that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc.

"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".
Crystal Donavan finds herself playing a deadly game with her sister’s kidnapper. It begins as seemingly harmless tasks and quickly turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Secrets from her past may hold the answers to who is behind the messages. If Crystal is going to outsmart the kidnapper she will have to play the game before she runs out of time.

These Deadly Games is a new YA thriller in which a young woman is pulled into a life and death situation. When she was young, Crystal found gaming as a distraction from her alcoholic father’s abuse. Now, an obsessed gamer, Crystal and her friends are preparing for an online tournament in which the winning team gets $250,000. Crystal is determined to win the prize money to help her Mom and sister so they don't have to move. The novel quickly escalates when, after dropping her little sister off for a school trip, she receives an anonymous message from a strange app showing her sister bound and gagged. Someone has kidnapped her sister and is threatening to kill her if she doesn't play along. The games begin as random tasks like stealing, baking, or making a prank call which seem harmless. What she soon discovers is that each of these tasks is designed to hurt or kill her friends one at a time and she realizes this isn't a simple kidnapping but a revenge plot for something she did in her past. This was a fun read for those who enjoy deadly-game novels. It is part mystery part thriller as the mc has to go against her moral ethics to save her sister. There were some interesting plot twists including toxic friends, secrets from the past, and tech hacks that added a nice element of surprise.

Whew 😰 looking at the average rating on this book, I wonder if I’m being harsh in my rating… but everything isn’t for everybody, and I can tell you that this one was NOT for me.

Let’s break it down.

Plot: So Crystal And her friends are really into this online game, and there is this big cash tournament coming up. She drops her sister off for an overnight trip and, in the mid of class, gets a message from someone who has her sister and is threatening to kill her. They tell her that she has to do everything they say or her sister dies. Oh, and she can’t tell anyone about it, and she can’t call the police, or her sister dies.

Characters: We are just going to talk about Crystal. She easily distracted with her sister's life in someone’s hands. She gets distracted by their online nemesis. She gets distracted by her friends. I don’t think she’s taking it seriously enough. She’s distracted by her game. There’s one time she’s so distracted by a boy she likes sneaking in her bedroom that the kidnapper basically tells her goodnight, and she doesn’t even ask about her sister.

Mystery/Twist/Suspense: lol I didn’t know what to label that, but I wanted it to be related to the genre. Considering how I guessed who the killer was early on, I just wasn’t impressed. It was predictable, and I spent most of the time hating Crystal’s decisions.

The funny thing is I’ve had a couple of people ask me about my rating. I’m secure in the fact that while I did finish this book, it was not me, and I don’t think I’ll recommend it to anyone.

The suspense definitely carried this one but I feel this all could’ve been cleared up by a simple phone call. It also felt like there were some distinct plot holes (who and how was this technology acquired?) that forced me to suspend my disbelief.

I left this book feeling mediocre about it all. This was definitely better than Urban’s debut, but I don’t think I’ll tune in for the next one.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well this book was twisted!

The cover of the book immediately grabbed my attention, and after reading the synopsis, I knew I had to read it. The plot felt very unique to me, but I definitely think that fans of Pretty Little Liars (the TV show) will enjoy this one.

These Deadly Games was full of twists and turns, and I loved the psychological thriller aspect. I did figure out the who, but not the why of the reveal.

This was not what I expected but was so twisty I didn't want to stop reading. Great storytelling, fast paced, and will keep you guessing.
Thanks to NetGalley for my copy of this book.

These Deadly Games is a YA (younger YA) read that combines untrustworthy characters and a mystery/thriller plot. I liked the idea of a girl having to complete tasks to save her sister. The tasks she must perform were interesting and got me thinking if I would be able to pull them off. I liked the way the story came about, the pacing and the mystery of how is doing this to the main character.

I will say the story read younger than I was anticipating and so I never really connected to anyone. I liked that I wasn't sure of any of the characters, is it good vs evil or more the less of two evils? While the story was a bit predictable the ending was fun, and I enjoyed the ride.

I would get this for my pre-teen or younger teen family members, it was a fun read and nothing so scary. I enjoyed the game and think readers who like mystery or thrillers would fun this a fun read as well. I received an ARC via NetGalley and St. Martin's Press and I am leaving an honest review. 3.75 stars

As high schooler Crystal and her friends prepare to compete in a gaming contest for huge amounts of prize money, she gets a text challenging her to play a different game - with her younger sister's life as the prize!

This book is a page-turner! Everybody's a suspect in this rollercoaster of a thrill ride where the stakes are high and the games are deadly! Urban pulls no punches in this one, ruthlessly torturing her characters with every twist and turn on the pages. I'm not into video games, so I was a little worried that there would be sections that would bore me to tears, but that wasn't the case at all! If you love YA mysteries that keep you guessing until the very end, check this one out!

Thanks to Diana's Street Team, NetGalley, and the publishers for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Crystal Donovan wants nothing more than to win the regional MortalDusk gaming tournament with her friends and use her share of the prize money to ensure her mother can pay the mortgage. Crystal and her friends haven't had the easiest past five years, but her team has a fair chance of winning and she can turn things around with that money. But MortalDusk and all her hopes go out the window when Crystal receives a video of her little sister Caelyn bound and gagged. Her captor demands Crystal play a 24-hour “game” in which she must follow all of their rules or else Caelyn dies. The tasks start off seemingly harmless, but Crystal realizes they compound into brutal crimes meant to hurt and even kill her best friends (and MortalDusk teammates) while implicating her every step of the way. Can Crystal find the person behind it all without alerting them and save Caelyn before their devious plans go too far?

I like a good thriller, and These Deadly Games is strong in those thriller elements. It packs a punch and isn’t afraid to introduce real stakes. It was wild to see what each “dare” was actually leading to and the consequences of it. It really makes the character question what she would do to save her sibling-- Can she pick off the people she’s closest to in order to save the life of the one person she loves the most? The conflict is intriguing, for sure, but it’s overplayed. After the first horrific consequence, it’s extremely hard to believe that Crystal would continue. It’s also hard to believe that as a tech-savvy teen who grew up around computers and gaming systems, Crystal has no idea how to defend against any of this and can’t deduce her way through the mastermind’s various tricks.

However, there’s also a mystery element. Who’s behind it all? Why are they doing this? Why target Crystal to pull off these tasks? Well, unfortunately, it’s not much of a mystery. There’s really only one VIABLE suspect, maybe two if you reeeeally pushed it. The motives of the other folks Crystal suspects are just flimsy. There’s a hint early on that I picked up on right away and combined with the characters’ backstory (which was slowly revealed, but also pretty easy to guess from the first mentions,) it was entirely too obvious. There was also a very obvious way that the instigator was manipulating Crystal and I don’t understand how she didn’t at least SUSPECT it. I spent at least two-thirds of the novel waiting for the inevitable reveal. It’s entirely too obvious. The motivation behind it is quite good, if only it had been doled out with a little more finesse.

I’m not against guessing the ending of a thriller. Guessing is part of the fun! But there needs to be multiple feasible possibilities and a sense of reasonable doubt in there to keep the adrenaline going. THAT is what this story is missing.

Diana Urban did a great job introducing a flurry of different dynamics between the characters that play into the story well. However, I wasn’t invested in any of them. Readers are supposed to be devastated when bad things happen to these characters, but we’re moving from one drama to the next-- whether it be a dare or dredging up old personal trauma-- so quickly that it never sinks in. Some characters were more bearable than others and while you were eventually supposed to sympathize with even the most annoying of them, I found myself NOT sympathizing all the same.

I don’t feel like I wasted my time reading this book, it had its shocks in the tasks demanded of Crystal and it was a fun ride. I just don’t think it’s a novel that’s going to stick with me in the long run when compared to other mystery thrillers I’ve read.

A huge thank you to Diana Urban (via her reading team) and NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this in advance of publication. A thriller that is predictable in part, but with enough tricks up its sleeve to keep most readers happy.
Our main character is Crystal and the whole focus of the story centres around her love of games. However, this is a game with deadly consequences.
On what starts as a fairly typical school day, Crystal is sent a video of her younger sister who appears to have been kidnapped. She is told to tell no one, not to contact the police and to do everything she is told if she is going to see her sister alive.
Initially these ‘games’ are fairly innocent. The stakes are high enough to keep Crystal playing…and as they escalate in seriousness, it’s ever more apparent that this is part of a much bigger plan.
I found Crystal’s willingness to follow the plan quite unlikely. However, there is a reason for this, and it centres on a secret that Crystal and her friends have been keeping for years. The way the games develop is engaging, though the seriousness of these events took me rather by surprise. Crystal’s reluctance to trust others was adequately explained, and while I may not be wholly convinced by the ultimate plan I found myself desperate to know whether or not we’re going to see more of these characters.

“i sounded like some homicidal maniac, didn’t I?
well trust me- she didn’t deserve my mercy. Not after what she did.”

WOW.

this book had me on the edge of my seat and kept me guessing through every page... I kept thinking I knew what would happen and then Diana Urban would throw a bombshell in there.

this was suuuuuch a good read. when I say I could not put it down, I mean it.

thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!

I love trying new thrillers by authors I haven't read before. There is something about the thrill of a new author that gets my blood pumping. The aspect of not knowing what's coming will always get me ready to try something new. Diana came very highly recommended and I couldn't say no.

A sister kidnapped. A sinister game. Nowhere to turn. A deadly secret. Crystal must follow the rules if she wants to see her sister again. Will she figure the clues out to rescue her sister? Or will this ruthless person get their revenge?

The mystery surrounding the kidnapping of Crystal's sister was decent and the games she had to complete got more insane as she passed each one. These went a lot further than I thought they would and it kept me glued to the story. I was curious to see how much Crystal would sacrifice to save her sister.

Once we got to the conclusion and our questions were answered, that was where you lost me. Yes, the kidnapper had good reasons to do what they have done but it seemed to drag on and on. I never thought the book was going to end. We got answers and something huge happened. I thought that would be it but it just kept going and I got bored after a while. Not a good way to end a book.

And let's talk about how every single character was nuts and not in a good way. Every single person in this story annoyed me and I couldn't connect with any of them. I honestly didn't like any of them, so the sympathy was nowhere to be found. That really draws away from the story in a huge way and it made this a lot less enjoyable.

These Deadly Games was an okay read. The mystery was unique and it really had my mind working overtime. This was my first time reading a book by Diana and I will definitely give her books another shot. She is one hell of a storyteller, she just has ending issues with unlikeable characters.

How far would you go to save someone you love?

I took a chance on this book because it was "read now", but I'm not a huge thriller reader. I read this in one sitting though, I just couldn't put it down. It was fast-paced, brutal, and intriguing from beginning to end, and every time I thought }'d figured everything out about the story, there would be another reveal.

Whether you’ve read her debut or not, let me assure you that Diana Urban has not lost the swift charm and her distinctly acute twists that plants the seed of doubt on your mind. I am on exam week and it was a strenuous effort to put this book down.

These Deadly Games centers around Crystal Donovan, high school student caught in a twisted game. When she finds out that her younger sister, Caelyn, is being held hostage, Crystal is a bellicose girl on a warpath; participating in detrimental games that Crystal, at first, thought has one acceptable objective: taking her team out of the fast-approaching state-wide e-sports tournament. But she soon realizes that the killer might have been after the heels of something else.

These Deadly Games is an explosive sophomore book that deeply unsettles the readers like ancestral beliefs. Whether you like a game-based mystery stories or you are more in the logical part of the spectrum (like me), the book pulls you along on a feral goose chase for the killer, downing you headfirst into the waters of suspense and never lends a hand to help you to the shore until the very last page.

Some of the twists are rather predictable but I found myself shaping an O on my lips for the other twists that I could never see coming in a million miles. The plot is structured so crisply, never allowing the readers to take a breath and keeps them pointing fingers. Though the killer reveal disappointed me greatly, the experience and winding roads I took to get to the ending was a memorable one. The twists are unconventional, brilliant, and bold.

Other than the eponymous game, the book also explores several themes, and though some of these are not dissected in detail (much to my disappointment), I would argue that friendship is the theme that takes the grand entrance for this book.

Crystal isn’t a very endearing person to spend time with and it frustrated me that we had to spend the entire book in her head. I personally think she lacks miniscule details or character drive that would make her relatable and the gargantuan-sized compulsion she had to carry throughout the games were not enough to scratch even a hairline on my sympathy.

Bottom line, this book is such a creative effort and astonishingly flabbergasting, completely packaged with twists that coax you to keep going. Diana Urban has doubtlessly stepped up her craft and I can’t wait for the next story she has in store.

I received a complimentary copy of These Deadly Games from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Wow! This novel blew my mind! Until I figured out what was going on, I was hanging on the edge of my seat...and then I just couldn't wait to see it unfold. This was a very attention grabbing novel, with a slow build. (I am not a gamer and really could not relate to or develop interest for those parts, but I understood that it was part of these characters' lives.) The plot was very well thought out...I was actually experiencing the fear and anxiety with the main character. Great book!