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Their Vicious Games

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
"A brutally honest and haunting cautionary tale...exposing the lie that is meritocracy and the unrelenting toll that being a final girl takes. A bloody tale spun masterfully...a dark delight." —Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, New York Times bestselling author of Ace of Spades

A Black teen desperate to regain her Ivy League acceptance enters an elite competition only to discover the stakes aren't just high, they're deadly, in this "spine-chilling thriller" (Publishers Weekly).
You must work twice as hard to get half as much.

Adina Walker has known this the entire time she's been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy—a school for the rich (and mostly white) upper class of New England. It's why she works so hard to be perfect and above reproach, no matter what she must force beneath the surface. Even one slip can cost you everything.

And it does. One fight, one moment of lost control, leaves Adina blacklisted from her top choice Ivy League college and any other. Her only chance to regain the future she's sacrificed everything for is the Finish, a high-stakes contest sponsored by Edgewater's founding family in which twelve young, ambitious women with exceptional promise are selected to compete in three mysterious events: the Ride, the Raid, and the Royale. The winner will be granted entry into the fold of the Remington family, whose wealth and power can open any door.

But when she arrives at the Finish, Adina quickly gets the feeling that something isn't quite right with both the Remingtons and her fellow competitors, and soon it becomes clear that this larger-than-life prize can only come at an even greater cost. Because the Finish's stakes aren't just make or break...they're life and death.

Adina knows the deck is stacked against her—it always has been—so maybe the only way to survive their vicious games is for her to change the rules.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 5, 2023
      Black 18-year-old Adina Walker—valedictorian of Edgewater Academy, a school for the affluent, largely white, population of Massachusetts’s elite—thinks she has her future at Yale all planned out. Then she gets into a physical altercation with classmate Esme Alderidge, a mean and powerful socialite. The event results not only in Yale rescinding Adina’s acceptance, but in Adina getting blacklisted from every other Ivy League college. Desperate to get back into her dream school, Adina befriends Pierce Maxwell Remington IV, the second son of the most influential family in New England, who purportedly invites her via letter to enter a prestigious competition called the Finish. Along with 11 other girls, Adina must compete in three mysterious challenges: the Ride, the Raid, and the Royale. But what she assumed would be events based around “upper crust manners” turns out to be a vicious game of life or death. Slight worldbuilding occasionally causes confusion that saps tension from perilous, high-stakes scenes. Nevertheless, through Gossip Girl–inspired drama that interrogates the ability of power and privilege to corrupt, debut author Wellington delivers a spine-chilling thriller. Ages 14–up.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Ariel Blake narrates this suspenseful thriller with a portrayal that illuminates its main character. Alina, a scholarship student at Edgewater Academy, has had her early entrance acceptance to Yale rescinded because of losing her temper. She's got just one opportunity to regain her place, and that's to compete in "The Finish," an invitation-only competition in which 12 girls vie for the financial support of the Remington family. But the stakes are much higher than Alina imagines. Blake portrays Alina's determination as she tries to navigate the treachery of the game. Subtle changes in timbre help differentiate the other characters; for example, a tone of superiority perfectly denotes the stuck-up Leighton. A fiendish page-turner worth listening to. S.K.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

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