Review | The Family Game by Catherine Steadman

The Family Game is a mystery/thriller by Catherine Steadman.

A rich, eccentric family. A time-honored tradition. Or a lethal game of survival? One woman finds out what it really takes to join the 1% in this riveting psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Something in the Water, Mr. Nobody, and The Disappearing Act.

Harry is a novelist on the brink of stardom; Edward, her husband-to-be, is seemingly perfect. In love and freshly engaged, their bliss is interrupted by the reemergence of the Holbecks, Edward's eminent family and the embodiment of American old money. For years, they've dominated headlines and pulled society's strings, and Edward left them all behind to forge his own path. But there are eyes and ears everywhere. It was only a matter of time before they were pulled back in . . .

After all, even though he's long severed ties with his family, Edward is set to inherit it all. Harriet is drawn to the glamour and sophistication of the Holbecks, who seem to welcome her with open arms, but everything changes when she meets Robert, the inescapably magnetic head of the family. At their first meeting, Robert slips Harry a cassette tape, revealing a shocking confession which sets the inevitable game in motion.

What is it about Harry that made him give her that tape? A thing that has the power to destroy everything? As she ramps up her quest for the truth, she must endure the Holbecks' savage Christmas traditions all the while knowing that losing this game could be deadly.

The Family Game is a holiday themed thriller that I read with the Horror Spotlight discord group. I want to say straightaway that I liked this book because I'm probably gonna spend this review doing a whole lot of complaining.

First off, for those of you who hate prologues because it usually means the book is boring for a while, I hate to inform you that there is a prologue and the book is, in fact, boring for a while. The Family Game starts out with a man and a woman enjoying the holidays in New York. It feels very much like a super messed up holiday romcom. It's romantic and it's over the top and it's in the big city, but you know from the prologue the female main character is going to wind up bloody and scared for her life on the floor of his family's holiday home.

There is a lot to not believe in this novel, but there's also a lot to keep you reading and guessing and griping out loud.

My biggest fear when I started reading the holiday game was that I would not care whether this woman survived by the end of the book because she's not very likable. But somehow even though I didn't like a soul in this novel, I still wanted to know what was really happening. I'm not usually the type of reader who tries to guess who did it, what the twist is, who's lying, but I was guessing and wondering in The Family Game.

There is so much to unpack now that I have finished reading this novel, but I don't have it in me to do the unpacking that's necessary to make it all makes sense. This book is being billed as a psychological thriller, but it's not what it had hoped to be.

So while I could sit around the kitchen table and gripe about the characters and the plot all day long, I still would not tell you not to read it. If you have The Family Game on your TBR, you should definitely read it. There is something to be said about a book that can make you gripe this much. Read it and then let me know what you think. We can scratch our heads about it together.

3/5 Stars
⭐⭐⭐★★

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Book Review | Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Ready Player Two is the science fiction sequel to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

An unexpected quest. Two worlds at stake. Are you ready?

Days after Oasis founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday's vault, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the Oasis a thousand times more wondrous, and addictive, than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle and a new quest. A last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who will kill millions to get what he wants. Wade's life and the future of the Oasis are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.

First of all, I enjoyed reading Ready Player Two.

I hated Wade's character in the beginning. That was really bumming me out, but Ready Player Two turned into a treasure hunt book with a countdown timer. Those are two of my favorite story elements so I was EXCITED. I loved the stakes of the countdown timer (as I always do), but treasure hunts should take a long time. Cline got that aspect right in Ready Player One.

Here's the most important part, right? The references! There were a lot more music and movie references in Ready Player Two, and I was here for every single one them. They were written just for me.

This wasn't a perfect book, but neither was Ready Player One. It was fun and it was nostalgic, and I had a great time playing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

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Book Review | The Last One by Alexandra Oliva

Survival is the name of the game as the line blurs between reality TV and reality itself in Alexandra Oliva’s fast-paced novel of suspense.

She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far.

It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it human-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game.

Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes.

But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing.

Sophisticated and provocative, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real: how readily we cast our judgments, how easily we are manipulated.

This is my third review of the week, folks. I have no idea what has gotten into me.

I'm thrilled that I get to praise another book today, though!

The Last One! I was so skeptical about this book. I thought it was going to be another standard entry in an oversaturated market, but trusted reviewers were making me want to give it stronger consideration.

Most of the reviews I've read are from people who don't watch reality TV but say it doesn't matter to the enjoyment of this book. I don't watch much reality TV, but the one show I do watch is Survivor so I can address it from that point of view. You definitely don't need to be any kind of reality TV fan, but I enjoyed the perspective. We all know those shows boil down to the editing so I got a lot of enjoyment in the portrayal of how heavily edited the shows actually are. The viewer sees the "reality" that gets created on the editing floor.

But enough about the reality TV bit because it's really only a means of setting up what The Last One is all about. The first line of The Last One is "the first one on the production team to die will be the editor".

What is happening while these contestants are out vying for a million dollars? Is it all part of the competition?

I enjoyed this book so much. I read it because I wanted some distracting entertainment. I got that and so much more.

And this is a debut! Two of my favorite books I've read this year are debuts. (This one and Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace.) That's exciting.

The range of folks I would recommend this to is pretty wide. I think it's billed as science fiction. In my opinion, the best genre books blur the lines through all of the speculative fiction genres. Fans of post-apocalypse, zombie (not a zombie book), dystopian (not a dystopian), YA (not a YA), will all find reasons to love this one, too.

8/10: Great Read