I really enjoy a good cat and mouse type of mystery game and this book fit the bill. I enjoyed reading this novel and was always wondering what was going to happen next. An enjoyable read that I would recommend.

I read lot of YA that tends to feel elevated. This is a true YA book and you are aware of it at all times. It was a fun and quick read so I’m giving three solid stars. I did enjoy this second book of the author more than her debut and would recommend it to the right audience.

Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/ Wednesday Books for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This was a wild ride. The execution was okay but I kept screaming at the main character to call the police. There were several moments where none of it felt feasible or real and it took me out of the story, but overall it was a solid thriller and I think the intended YA audience will really enjoy it. I'll definitely recommend it to my teacher friends for their suspense loving kids and their class libraries.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest, personal review. This was a good cat and mouse, suspense style story. Crystal Donovan and her friends are trying to earn spots to a gaming tournament which has a cash prize that she wants to win to help her family. After dropping off her sister, who isattending a class trip, she begins to receive ominous texts with a video of her sister, kidnapped! The games begin and it's a race against time to complete the tasks in order to save her. Although the book was a bit slow at times, it was worth the read just to see how it ended and who was behind it all. Did I mention there was a previous mystery incident from t years ago that involves these friends?

Thank you to the publisher & NetGalley for gifting me an e-copy!
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“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. If you don’t respond to my messages within a minute, she dies. If you lose or forfeit, she dies.”

This is the message 16-year old Crystal gets on a normal school day about her sister being held captive. Each sadistic “game” involves taking down her friends one-by-one with no resolution to what’s coming in the end or who’ll take the last fall. Crystal belongs to a clique of gamer friends who are getting to compete in a national gaming tournament with some serious money to win. Each player has a stake on the win so when Crystal gets this message, she not only has to follow instructions but also decipher who’s the perpetrator before it’s too late.

I generally don’t navigate towards YA thrillers (I like YA horror though) but this was an absolute wild ride! I couldn’t stop turning the pages and had to know what was coming for each friend and also who was the unstable genius behind those instructions. The book was a full 5 stars for me until the end happened which had me knock down a star. I still highly recommend this book if you want to enjoy a fast-paced story! I generally also tend to think that any story with gaming automatically has some sci-fi in it. But this book was 100% a certified, lean YA thriller!

Crystal and her friends are looking forward to their being on the team to win the video game MortalDusk. If they win they can hopefully continue to win the “big” prize of three million dollars. She wants her share of the prize to help her mom pay off the mortgage on their home. Her dad has left them due to problems at home. Even though her mom is a surgical nurse, money is tight. Games have always been Crystal’s way to deal with the worse reality she lives. Crystal gets strange messages about playing a game that is “real life.” When sent a picture of her little sister Caelyn tied up in a basement instead of being on her weekend trip, Crystal agrees to play the game Anonymous1 so her sister doesn’t die. At first the pranks don’t seem so bad, until she realizes that the pranks affect her friends that are also part of the team for the video game competition. As Crystal realizes this, she tries to figure out who is Anonymous1 is. Crystal realizes that her friends versus her sister life is in jeopardy, she must try to save her friends as well as save her sister. She must save her sister’s life. Will she be able to do this?

The novel is a fast paced young adult thriller mystery. It had me guessing who was Anonymous1’s identity. I liked how the novel kept me trying to guess who was making Crystal play this deadly game. Watching how Crystal ‘s attitude about Anonymous1’s game is fascinating. There are so many twists and turns that I didn’t want to stop reading it. The author has written an excellent book that makes me want to read the next book that she writes.

Crystal Donavan is a gamer. A major gamer. She and her group of 5 friends are obsessed with the game Mortal Dusk, and are determined to qualify for a tournament with a huge payout. This tournament is all she can think about, and anything distracting is just a nuisance.

Until the ultimate distraction: a message on her cell phone. A video of her little sister Caelyn, bound and gagged. Her kidnapper wants to play the ultimate game. Play, or your sister dies. And each seemingly innocuous task paints a bigger picture. The kidnapper doesn't just want Crystal to suffer. They're going after her entire team.

This is definitely a YA thriller.

That's not to say it's a BAD thriller. But YA has the ignominious stereotype of being "less than" the more adult counter parts. And this one feels like it's on the bottom of the YA half of the spectrum. As in, we're dancing in Christopher Pike territory, not Courtney Summers.

And Christopher Pike clearly has his place in YA thrillers, even if he hasn't been well known since I was in high school back in the dark days, before accessible internet and when mobile phones were the size of a brick.

But I digress.

This book is less stand alone YA, and more gateway YA. The pacing and realism are off quite a bit, and while the story is enjoyable, you do get taken out of the moment regularly. The red herrings are extremely clunky.

Though I will say, while I did figure out whodunnit pretty quickly, the twisty bits were a welcome surprise, and that is always a plus with any thrillers, no matter the genre.

Great for someone just getting into the world of suspense and thrillers, but maybe not for someone who's already dived into the pool.

Imagine receiving an image of your sister and the kidnapper forcing you to complete forbidden tasks for the next 24 hours to ensure her safety. This book does just that. If you are looking for a book that will keep you are on the edge of your seat, look no further.

The gamer aspect in the beginning wasn't my favorite (I'm not a gamer so I didn't understand everything), but that being said, I enjoy this book and the wild ride it took me on.

I really liked the mystery of figuring out who was behind everything in this book. I had many theories and as the book progressed I was able to whittle them down and figure it out a bot before the reveal. I loved this because I hate when I know what happens from the start in thrillers. The guessing game was strong in These Deadly Games and even if you do figure it out before the reveal, there's still loads of things you find out after.

The whole premise of The Gamemaker "making" Crystal do these horrible things to her friends was scary. However, you sympathize with her because she's doing them to save her sister. It really messes with you as a reader too, because you try to put yourself in her shoes. Even though Crystal does these things to her friends, the friendships between the characters are heavily featured and I enjoyed the development of them throughout the book.

It's a fast paced thriller that keeps you guessing. TW: Domestic Abuse

Diana Urban does not hold back her punches with her newest mystery/thriller, These Deadly Games.

Crystal Donovan’s life comes to a crashing halt when she receives a video from an unknown person showing her younger sister gagged, bound, and crying. The unknown offender leaves Crystal with the instructions to play a series of games… or her sister dies. Helpless to the whims of the kidnapper, Crystal is forced to play game after game, from eating brownies to stealing a test answer key.

But when the kidnapper begins to target Crystal’s friends and the games grow more and more malicious, Crystal learns that she must quickly uncover who is behind these games before they make her choose between her sister and her friends once and for all.

These Deadly Games starts off innocently enough, with the biggest drama in Crystal’s life being who among her friend group is going to compete in a gaming tournament where there is a large cash prize for the winner.

But after the first chapter concludes, we are almost instantly treated with the horrific start to the true and sinister game of this story. Both Crystal and the reader are left breathless with the terrifying turn of events that happens when she receives the video of her sister gagged and bound. Moreover, once the games begin, the pace becomes brutal with how much suspense and fear is packed into Crystal’s thoughts as she struggles to solve puzzles, play games, and even hurt her friends in her quest to save her sister.

This is especially clear when it’s revealed that Crystal is being watched all the time. The kidnapper sends her messages about her whereabouts, such as knowing when she enters her room, who she is speaking to, and when she deviates from the kidnapper’s instructions.

There are a lot of red herrings that Urban introduces to lead her readers down several wrong paths when it comes to uncovering the kidnapper. It truly does make it so that the reader is forced to keep track of these potential leads, scouring the pages for clues.

I would strongly advise readers to look up potential trigger warnings for this novel, as there are descriptions of child kidnapping, child harm, and domestic abuse depicted in These Deadly Games.

Urban should be praised for her ability to ensnare her audience, keeping us suspended in stasis of terror while we devour the story. She does a great job in leaving behind breadcrumbs of the identity of the kidnapper, making for a second-read that is just as thrilling as the first.

Unfortunately, while the biggest twist of the novel did catch me off guard, I found myself a little peeved that These Deadly Games had a teenager be the antagonist of the story. This is not because I don’t think teenagers cannot be antagonists, but because I find it incredibly hard to believe that a teenager–even an adult eighteen year old –had the ability to do everything that the kidnapper does during the story.

Dylan–or Andrew, as we come to find out–is only eighteen, yet we are to be expected to believe that he could hack into multiple devices and computers in a variety of different locations, all for the sake of tormenting Crystal.

It just seems improbable that he would know exactly what she was doing, unless he managed to hack not only into her phone, but also security systems, camera, tablets, other people’s computers and devices, and more. There is no way one teenage boy would be able to do all of that, even if they were an experienced hacker. Otherwise, anyone with that kind of talent did not belong in a standard high school.

Moreover, his escape from sure death at the end was also incredibly improbable, to the point where I was taken out of the novel because it was so baffling. I am unsure if Urban plans on continuing this story in a sequel, but I felt that this could have been an excellent standalone without this minor twist.

Regardless of both these elements, These Deadly Games was a fun read. Provided that readers take care to look up the trigger warnings, it was a compelling mystery/thriller that will horrify and shock you.

This book definitely had its moments but I figured out the "who" pretty quickly but was still interested to see how it played out. The ending is disappointing. Needs to be done and done. I'd still recommend this to people, it just wasn't my favorite but I did love how fast paced it was.

2/5 stars ⭐⭐
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Thank you to the publishers and Net Galley for giving me a copy of this book! This is my honest review, all views are my own.
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These Deadly Games follows Crystal, a video game enthusiast with a ragtag group of friends who want to win a tournament for their favorite game for the prize money. Right before their big weekend, Crystal's sister gets kidnapped, and the kidnapper--Anonymous1--demands Crystal follow his twisted games. Soon, Crystal realizes that Anonymous1 wants her to hurt and kill her friends, one by one...
This was initially very gripping because of its absurdity: who would ask for Crystal to do these outrageous and deadly tasks? But by the midway point, I realized it was being done more for shock value than anything else, as the games got more and more ridiculous and Crystal got further and further away from reality. The writing was a little confusing at times, and the dialogue was more than a little absurd / cringe (notable terms include "'give us the tea' 'there is no tea,'" "fuckbucket," "asshat," "A mood, honestly," "ridonculous," "snotface," and a whole paragraph explaining Among Us the video game). Some seemed more realistic than others, like the tea thing, but the amount of creative swearing is... unusual, to say the least. The plot was pretty wild to me as a newer reader of mystery/thriller, but I've seen reviews saying how it's not very new to the genre and quite predictable. I myself did predict the ending, but that was a mix of foreshadowing and paranoia/suspicion of everyone, so I can't really say anything to its predictability. What did get me, in the end, was the fact that the reveal happened around 80% or so? So there was a lot of other things left to confront according to the author, while I wanted the story to wind down differently and more quickly. The ending itself was meh--not very satisfying, but not so unsatisfying that I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. Just meh. The characters were not that great, either: Crystal got a bit unhinged a bit too fast, and she was doing some really crazy things by the end that I felt was probably unrealistic. The connections between her and the other friends in the group felt rather shallow, and the big secret surrounding Brady was not really gripping with the way it was introduced, nor did it feel like it tortured and traumatized the other characters as much as it did Crystal and Zoey. I basically felt like the side characters were not treated like they mattered because Crystal didn't put so much weight on their friendship besides the secret that held them together, really? I don't know, I just didn't feel it like I wanted to.
These Deadly Games is an interesting book for readers looking to break into the genre, but I personally found the references cringey and the character relationships lacking, with a meh open ending where I didn't truly care. I read the whole thing just because the initial concept was intriguing and I wanted to know the result, not because I cared about the characters (which, as a newer reader to the genre, I gather that's *not* the point of mystery/thriller). 2 stars.

I was excited for this one! And happily I was not let down. Twisty, atmospheric and just plain scary, I loved it. I think that Diana has really grown as an author, she got rid of the plot holes that really destroyed her first book for me.

--> 4.5 stars!

This was a lot of fun! I think this is an improvement on Urban's debut (All your twisted secrets). I liked that book, but I felt like it was a little rushed and the ending was a little lacklustre. This book on the other hand made use of it's pages and was much better paced. I liked that the characters were just as unlikeable as Urban's last book, because I think it made the story interesting. I also really liked the vibe of this book. It's got a lot of tension that is really well played-up. I will say that the twist was a little easy to guess, but I forgive mystery books for that a lot of the time because in my opinion, and in the case of this book, that just means the clues make sense and are well-placed. Overall I think this was a really solid YA mystery, and Urban's improvement from her debut to this book makes me excited to read what she puts out next!

I think it was a case of just personal preference. I’m not really a fan of flashback style storytelling. I prefer it to be in alternate timeline.

It wasn’t horrible by any means, it just wasn’t for me. I did appreciate that gaming was the central focus. Something that it so rarely done in books. So I applaud the author for that. Unfortunately, I was just the wrong audience with this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the advanced copy for review. All opinions are my own.

I breezed through reading this ARC. I enjoyed it and the author does really well with adding things to throw you off just when you think you've figured something out. It also had many elements that could happen to teens in this day and age. Definitely read it if you enjoy books similar to Karen McManus.

Much as I genuinely enjoyed reading this novel, it also gave me such anxiety!! The premise: Crystal (our protagonist) gets a message on her phone of her little sister gagged, bound, and instructions to play the kidnapper's game or her sister dies. As each task is presented, Crystal realizes that they're not as random or bizarre as they seem - they're meant to hurt her friends and make her feel responsible. But why? The motive is unclear, but Crystal knows that if she doesn't comply, her sister's life is on the line.

Urban has a great technique for writing thriller and suspense. In particular, there's a scene with brownies that made my pulse race and my heart beat. But it never feels forced, never feels heavy-handed. There are moments where you might think you know who did it and who is responsible, but the weaving of the story from past to present and the little distractions that make up a good thriller help to obfuscate the thread and keep you guessing until the very end. And if you DO guess what's going on, the writing is enjoyable and the way the story unfolds is reason enough to keep reading. The ending matters, but the fun is definitely in how you get there, and just how nervous you were. :)

These Deadly Games is a fun, YA novel where Crystal Donovan gets a cryptic message on her phone from someone who kidnapped her sister. She must follow their rules for 24 hours or her sister dies. All the while, her group of six friends are battling it out to see who gets to compete in a gaming competition. Can Crystal keep it together enough to not harm her sister?

This book was a typical YA thriller where quite everything was unrealistic. I did find myself wanting to keep reading, which made the book enjoyable. I was able to guess the twist pretty easily, but that did not take away much from my rating. Overall, the characters were VERY hard to like, especially Crystal. She was whiny and selfish mostly.

Despite this, I would rate this 3.5 stars rounded down for the hard-to-like characters. I would still recommend this to YA's since they might like the cat and mouse aspect and gaming part of the story.

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This story felt very similar to new hype that is dark academia, except with a ‘killer’ mystery (pun intended! Lol). I really enjoyed this ya mystery and the story kept me guessing both what was going to happen next and who did it the entire time. The book fell a little flat for me in areas but it is definitely worth the read if you like mysterious, high school age, online mysteries.