★★★☆☆ If you crossed Squid Game with Crazy Rich New Englanders...

Their Vicious Games

Joelle Wellington

What have we here? Let's take a look at the publisher's blurb... "searing thriller that’s Ace of Spades meets Squid Game with a sprinkling of The Bachelor". Later we have "Because the ... stakes aren’t just make or break…they’re life and death." OK, so we already know the plot. A group of contestants are going to compete in some weird artificial game-like thing in which most of them are expected to die, leaving only the winner standing at the end. What about the characters? Well, most of them are people who are, in the words of Crazy Rich Asians, "richer than God". And they are awful. You already know them. You met them in Crazy Rich Asians and Knives Out, and for that matter, Squid Game.

Adina Walker is the grain of sand in this oyster, the Seong Gi-Hun, the Katniss Everdeen of these games. As the book begins she is a student at the tony Edgewater Academy. Edgewater is owned or subsidized or something by the Remington Family. The Remingtons are richer than people who are richer than God -- they are rich enough to literally get away with murder. (The exact formal relationship of the Remingtons to Edgewater is never entirely clear, nor does it matter -- they run the place.) The Remington brood are (or were) students at Edgewater. The other students are mostly the children of the aforementioned richer-than-God families. Adina (Our Hero!) is not, though. Her mother is a professor at Edgewater, allowing her to attend on a scholarship. Suburbia is her secret stigma -- the shame she strives to deny.

Adina is bright -- she is in line to be class valedictorian, and she has been accepted at a bunch of good colleges, one of them Yale, where she intends to go. But she makes a mistake. Her former friend Esme betrays her. Stung, Adina revenges herself by spreading a vicious rumor about Esme's family. (This rumor happens to be true, but make no mistake, Adina is not motivated by her love of truth -- she wants to GET Esme.) There's a fight with fingernails and blood. Subsequently all Adina's acceptances, Yale and all the other schools, are mysteriously rescinded. She sees only one way to get back on track -- a mysterious annual competition known by the ominous name of the Finish, in which a dozen young women compete. Usually these young women are the scions of wealthy families, not grubby suburbanites like Adina. But Adina gets herself invited. (I will not tell you how she makes this happen -- let us just say that it is not an edifying tale.)

Are you getting the impression that I don't much like Adina? If so, have a lollipop -- you are correct. Adina begins as a not at all admirable schemer (who is not even very good at scheming). Fine, so she's a flawed character. Hamlet is a flawed character. Tony Stark is flawed. Meg Murry is a flawed hero. That's why I called Adina the sand in the oyster -- she's there to become a pearl.

We know the plot and all the other characters in advance. (I'm fudging a little on that -- there is one rich person who is not awful and is in fact rather a lovely person. If Joelle Wellington wants to write a sequel, I'd like to hear about the Finish from Saint's point of view.) Thus, Adina's growth is the essential center of this story. Perhaps 10% of the way into the book, I was thinking to myself, "I hope Wellington has some mighty big rabbits ready to pull out of her hat." Rabbits do in fact come out of Wellington's hat. Adina grows. By the end of the book she has become something more interesting than the petty schemer she was at the beginning. But the bunnies appear late, and they are not terribly impressive. I dislike Final Girl Adina less than Starting Line-up Adina, but I do not love or admire her.

I thank NetGalley and Simon and Shuster Canada for an advance reader copy of Their Vicious Games. This review expresses my honest opinions.

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AnonymousApril 25, 2023 at 10:33 AM
Great Review!,,
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