Playing with Fire by Kiki Swinson is a prequel to her Playing Dirty and Notorious duology. The story revolves around Yoshi, a young woman who is irreverent, reckless, and determined to succeed at her prestigious college while balancing the demands of her overbearing mother. Yoshi’s ambition is to become a great lawyer, make a difference, and make her hardworking mother proud. However, she finds herself entangled in a web of lies, secrets, and betrayals that put everything she cares about at risk.

The book explores several themes, including ambition, deception, and the pressures of familial expectations. It delves into the lengths one might go to achieve their goals and the moral quandaries that arise when ambition conflicts with ethical considerations. The theme of deception is prevalent as Yoshi uncovers secrets and faces betrayals that test her resolve and integrity.

Playing with Fire by Kiki Swinson is a thrilling read that combines a gripping plot with multifaceted characters and thought-provoking themes. Despite some pacing issues, the novel’s strengths in character development and narrative twists make it a recommended read for fans of suspenseful and high-stakes fiction.

Scrolling through my kindle often I end up going into books blind as I have so many on there and I can't remember what they are about, just that they must have sounded good at the time when I originally got them. Some have been misses, but others hit. Playing with Fire by Kiki Swinson is a prequel to a Duology that she released. I haven't read any books by this author before but I am now interested in checking out the duology as I would love to see this character in the present time and see what her life is like now and how her past and what she went through in this book impacted her. In Playing with Fire, our main character Yoshi Lomax is studying Political Science and knows her way around the law. She is a college student and has her fair share of drinking and partying and doing drugs with her roomies. That is until one year over break, a domino effect of incidents will change Yoshi's life for good. The first is meeting Penny at the school and learning that a college girl who looks similar to her has gone missing and no one has found her yet, the second thing is that while Yoshi is back home with her mum and step-dad she learns that one of her roomies Gia has overdosed on drugs. Yoshi heads back to the hospital, only to be blamed by Gia's parents for being a bad influence on her daughter - yet it was Gia who introduced Yoshi to drugs. The next incident is Yoshi at a party where she finds herself being a victim of sexual assault and of course, when she tries to report it this leads her to be judged, assaulted even more, and then in the end to top things off her other roommate Jessica goes missing and things don't look positive. Playing with Fire has everything from drugs, overdoses, death, and murder as well as sexual assault and domestic violence. I have to say at the end of this, I was surprised that Yoshi managed to get through the year as personally if I suffered all this, I'd be curled up in a ball and wanting to shut away the world. Playing with Fire by Kiki Swinson was one of those diamonds in the bookshelves of random reads.

Playing With Fire is an outstanding multicultural thriller from bestselling author, Kiki Swinson. This is a prequel to her Notorious duology, which I haven’t read…yet.

Yoshi Lomax is a college student at a prestigious southern university. She’s in over her head in more ways than one. Can she regain control of her life before she’s completely off the rails?

Kiki Swinson is a gifted author of multicultural fiction, and she shows her ability in this prequel. She grabs the reader’s attention and easily keeps it throughout. In fact, I was halfway through this one before I raised my head. I couldn’t seem to put it down. And didn’t; not until I finished it. Yoshi is an interesting character. She’s biracial, which may or may not be part of her issues. She seems to be younger than her years and somewhat naïve, but I like her anyway. Some of the writing, narrative and dialogue, seems a little stilted, but I still couldn’t put it down, and it didn’t slow down the story or my reading. Overall, this is a great read, though I did deduct a star for the sometimes, in my humble opinion, stiffness. I rate Playing With Fire 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it to anyone who enjoys good fiction with a mysterious twist.

My thanks to Kensington Books, Dafina, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. However, the opinions expressed in this review are 100% mine and mine alone.

Kiki is not only a hometown author for me but she is a great story teller. It is so awesome to read her stories. It makes one wonder if she has experienced this or just a great story teller.

This was such a good book in my opinion. With a cast of characters that deal with the unthinkable that will have you wanting more. Yoshi dealt with so many things in this story. It was an exciting and fast paced read and it got me out of a reading slump another book put me in. And I was not ready for the twists and turns throughout the story. I can't wait for the next book.

This story doesn’t add up with the other books in the series. The prequel doesn’t tell us how Yoshi became the person she was in the Playing dirty series. Also Yoshi’s mother in prequel was portrayed totally different then in the other books. Things just didn’t add up. If you’ve never read the Playing Dirty series then I will say it’s a good suspenseful read, however for me the stories didn’t do it for me.

I included Playing with Fire in my monthly and weekly roundup of new releases and spotlighted it as Book of the Day on all of my Black Fiction Addiction platforms.

Playing with Fire has a good storyline…a little bit of hood mixed with a little bit of privilege. Yoshi Lomax finds herself in the middle of everything in spite of trying not to be. When your friends start to disappear, and die, it stands to reason that the law is going to start to give you the side-eye. I wish that the storyline could have been fleshed out a bit more. It felt rushed in places, and I don’t think full advantage was taken of the story possibilities. However, with that being said, I still found it to be a good read. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a huge fan of this author but this book wasn’t her best work. I liked the fast pace of the storyline but I really felt like the book was very inconsistent. There was a lot of moving parts and different storylines happening and I didn’t feel that I had closure in the end. The plot twist of Penny being an undercover was different and I liked that part but the story as a whole wasn’t fleshed out.

Playing with Fire found Yoshi Lomax in dire situations as females she was connected to continued to come up missing. The sordid tale of heinous crimes mixed with privilege was prevalent throughout this read. We appreciated the fact that the author was willing to take the story where it needed to tackle those important issues that our society as a whole is faced with today.

While the central theme kept us enthralled, there were times when the story fell flat, and the secondary story of Yoshi and her mother was a let down in the end with this narrated rushed closure, after it had been built up nicely. With the exception of one key character, it was rather predictable which took some of the luster away. With a little more work, this story has great potential.

Thank you NetGalley and Dafina Books for this book in exchange for a review.

I think this book had a lot of potential to be really good, but unfortunately it just fell flat for me. I didn't like Yoshi or any of the other characters, and I feel like the author could have benefitted from planning the story arc a little more. It was rushed in many places and didn't give the reader a chance to become invested.

I had such high hopes for this book. The author is usually a very good author to read, but, this book fell very flat. The book did not flow, it made no sense in some parts and just seemed rushed. I could not get into this book. I wish it was better as I had high hopes for this book. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book for my honest review. Receiving this book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

The story has potential but unfortunately I had a hard time getting through this book. The story line of Yoshi and her mother was very rushed and left a lot unfinished. Without including spoilers, I also didn't necessarily like how a certain event was handled, it was made serious but at the same time the response just rubbed me the wrong way. It could have just been how the author was trying to set the tone but it didn't connect well with me. The pacing was also off and I felt like we got to the conclusion a little too quickly. Again, the actual storyline does have potential and that's what kept me interested to the end.