I’m not a complete monster.
Crystal
1st DNF of 2022
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.
Are you ready?
When Crystal Donavan gets a message on a mysterious app with a video of her little sister gagged and bound, she agrees to play the kidnapper’s game. At first, they make her complete bizarre tasks: steal a test and stuff it in a locker, bake brownies, make a prank call.
But then Crystal realizes each task is meant to hurt—and kill—her friends, one by one. But if she refuses to play, the kidnapper will kill her sister. Is someone trying to take her team out of the running for a gaming tournament? Or have they uncovered a secret from their past, and wants them to pay for what they did…
As Crystal makes the impossible choices between her friends and her sister, she must uncover the truth and find a way to outplay the kidnapper… before it’s too late.
Available on the 01st of February 2021
Trigger Warning
Achoolism, domestic violence, kidnapping, death, mental health, toxic friendship
Review
Thanks to NetGalley, St Martin’s Press to send me a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own
Whoa! My first DNF of the year; I can’t believe it! To be real, I wanted to like this book so much as I like the concept of this book, but the realisation wasn’t for me.
The main problem was that it was too young adult for me. I’m used to reading YA books, but sometimes the writing and plot’s construction feel too young for me. I know that I’m not the primary target, so I had other problems while reading this book that comes from this one.
First, the main characters and honestly all the characters. I struggle to understand why they are friends as they don’t particularly like each other. I think it’s to show toxic friendship, but I didn’t believe it once. Even the main character isn’t believable. It is said that she is like that, but strangely, she doesn’t act like she is supposed to; there is a big difference between the said and done.
The second problem was the construction. I read half of the book, or to be honest, the first quarter and the last one, and it’s enough to understand the story. The last part is only a repetition of what happened in the book, and it’s easy to know who is the mastermind from the beginning.
Lastly, the different timelines. There are a lot of them. I comprehend why they are here; some are useful to understand why everything is happening and the characters. However, some of them aren’t vital.
All those elements make the story unbelievable for me. It’s fiction; I need to believe it even if it’s false. So I decided to stop reading, but try it and see as many people love it. I hope you will like it, it was just a miss for me.
Liz.
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