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Games: A Love Story
Normal People meets Fifty Shades of Grey in this sharp and provocative coming-of-age debut chronicling the turbulent romance between a brilliant economics grad student and a magnetic Wall Street banker two decades her senior.
When Lili Marwan—seeking to escape the unrelenting pressures of her master’s thesis, recent rejection from her foster family, and unresolved grief from the death of her parents—has an intense one-night stand with Aleksandr Petrov, her restless mind finally goes calm.
At twenty-two, Lili is already opinionated beyond her years: whether it’s astrology, democratic socialism, veganism, or the ravages of late-stage capitalism run rampant. But when a tall, dark stranger buys her a drink in a FiDi bar, she meets her match. Aleksandr is formidable, fiercely intelligent, and infuriatingly disarming. He’s also two decades older than her, a Capricorn with a birth chart full of red flags, a neoliberal capitalist, and a strong believer in the power of free markets, having escaped the Soviet Union in its dying days.
He’s the opposite of Lili in nearly every way. He challenges her at every turn. And she can’t stay away.
Over the course of a heady New York City summer, Lili and Aleksandr reach across the divide of their differences and the decades of their lives, discovering startlingly shared experiences. Their casual arrangement—rough sex, hours where Lili does not need to make any decisions—gives way fast to an unexpected intimacy, by turns breathtaking, then devastating.
As Lili struggles to understand herself and the complicated threads of her ambition, pain, and desire, she will have to decide: is she willing to risk great loss again, for the hope of profit that is finally within reach?
When Lili Marwan—seeking to escape the unrelenting pressures of her master’s thesis, recent rejection from her foster family, and unresolved grief from the death of her parents—has an intense one-night stand with Aleksandr Petrov, her restless mind finally goes calm.
At twenty-two, Lili is already opinionated beyond her years: whether it’s astrology, democratic socialism, veganism, or the ravages of late-stage capitalism run rampant. But when a tall, dark stranger buys her a drink in a FiDi bar, she meets her match. Aleksandr is formidable, fiercely intelligent, and infuriatingly disarming. He’s also two decades older than her, a Capricorn with a birth chart full of red flags, a neoliberal capitalist, and a strong believer in the power of free markets, having escaped the Soviet Union in its dying days.
He’s the opposite of Lili in nearly every way. He challenges her at every turn. And she can’t stay away.
Over the course of a heady New York City summer, Lili and Aleksandr reach across the divide of their differences and the decades of their lives, discovering startlingly shared experiences. Their casual arrangement—rough sex, hours where Lili does not need to make any decisions—gives way fast to an unexpected intimacy, by turns breathtaking, then devastating.
As Lili struggles to understand herself and the complicated threads of her ambition, pain, and desire, she will have to decide: is she willing to risk great loss again, for the hope of profit that is finally within reach?
432 pages, Hardcover
First published June 30, 2026
About the author
Anna Maria Volkova
2 books151 followersAnna Maria Volkova lives and works in New York City. Personal family histories from within the former Soviet Union and the Middle East inform her writing, as do her professional experiences. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, she studied history and political science. Games is her debut novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 569 reviews
July 9, 2026
She knows nothing good can come of someone meeting a need that deeply.
But Lili does stupid things sometimes.
Ever since Sittenfeld’s Gender Studies, I have been curious about seeing a relationship play out between a liberal woman and a conservative man. Don’t get me wrong, I think such a relationship would be doomed, but it’s a car crash I wouldn’t mind watching.
I can see why it would be hot to have sex with someone completely different, but building a workable relationship is a whole other beast. And it started out really interesting here. The verbal sparring— which was by far my favourite part —was both exciting and intellectually stimulating. A lot of the debates had by Lili and Aleksandr are quite cerebral and academic, so if you have zero interest in economic theory, don't bother.
Lili is a young, educated, liberal woman in America who strongly advocates for democratic socialism and veganism. Aleksandr is a diehard neoliberal capitalist whose experiences in socialist Russia have shaped his belief system. Their discussions were great and I think Volkova captured the joy that can be found in debate. Sometimes, especially when you are young and impassioned, better than someone who agrees with you is someone willing to argue with you— to listen to your ideas, push back on them, engage. This itself can be incredibly thrilling.
But my enjoyment ended at the economic theory and social criticism. I did not particularly like the sex scenes even near the beginning, and I got really tired when the trauma fucking became endless. There was so much sex that it was extremely boring to read. So much "pushing" to the edge, over the edge. The characters were a lot more fun when they were arguing.
There was also no discussion of consent or boundaries before some pretty dangerous choking. There was no practise of safe sex in any sense. And, in general, it could have been less 50 Shades (not the kink, just the rich guy with mindless drones in his employ).
Despite all of this, I thought there was still an opportunity to make something interesting of the book if the author had gone where I'd hoped. But no. The complex dynamic that had been built between these two incompatible people opened up questions: what does this power dynamic mean? How will their clash of ideologies come to a head? And the author decided instead to let it lie. After all this
To be fair, if you're just looking for another love/hate romance and don't mind some economic debates, then this will probably be more your cup of tea.
January 21, 2026
this book was tailor made for this exact version of me, at this exact point in my life. it cracked me open and let me free so much grief. it may as well have punched me in the fucking face
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Heart-wrenching, achingly beautiful, and insanely sharp.
The story sets up the honest and raw relationship between our characters, Lili and Aleksandr, from their very first conversation. We quickly come to learn that their two-decade age gap is somehow the smallest difference between them, because where they really differ is when it comes to their opinions on power, politics, and economics. This makes the baseline for what Lili herself calls “intellectual sparring”, and the desire Lili and Aleksandr have for each other is mirrored in this desire for debates and discussions that challenge them both continually.
Something I greatly appreciated was how much focus there was on the dialogue throughout the entire book. The communication between Lili and Aleksandr could only be described as sharp, quick, and witty. This dialogue and their back and forth truly felt both realistic to how communication works in real life, but also felt true to the characters. And in a story that is as character-focused and -driven as this one was, the pages upon pages of conversations felt essential as a way to build the connection and bond between the characters.
Other than connecting through words, Lili and Aleksandr’s relationship is additionally, maybe even majorly, formed and strengthened through intimacy and sex. These scenes are as intense and raw as the rest of the story, and while Lili uses them as more of an escape and a way to get out of her own head, this is where we see more of Aleksandr’s intense need for her; as something more than just a good time.
The story also perfectly depicted how miscommunication and misunderstandings can arise. Because here we have two people who, on the surface, are so vastly different, but they are clearly able to communicate well. Yet we see how self-preservation and old trauma made Lili shelter her feelings and made her overall just more cautious when it came to a relationship.
And as much as this is a love story, it is at its core also a story about navigating grief. It’s about how our childhood and upbringing, and essentially our trauma, shape us into the people we become and how these lived experiences dictate the choices we make as adults. We see how trauma and self-doubt can become a permanent crutch and lead to self-sabotage and deter a person from leaning on anyone in their support system.
I also think that minimising this to simply being a romantic love story is doing it a massive disservice. The platonic love in GAMES runs parallel to the love story between Lili and Aleksandr, and it feels just as tender and real. As much as Lili faces issues in her romantic relationship, she’s also met with issues and struggles when it comes to her three close friends, and I adored seeing how strong the bond and the love between them were.
This story really did cover a vast array of themes and subjects, and all throughout Anna Maria Volkova seamlessly moved us from one topic to another: sex, economics, capitalism, history, art, domination, submission, intimacy, grief, and loss.
She deserves such high praise for her ability to weave all these elements into the story in such a natural way. A way that always felt true to our characters and their arc and development.
There's no doubt in my mind that these characters, and this story, will stay with me for a long LONG time. Anna, you are so ridiculously brilliant, please let me live inside your brain !!!!!
The publisher very kindly provided this arc through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The story sets up the honest and raw relationship between our characters, Lili and Aleksandr, from their very first conversation. We quickly come to learn that their two-decade age gap is somehow the smallest difference between them, because where they really differ is when it comes to their opinions on power, politics, and economics. This makes the baseline for what Lili herself calls “intellectual sparring”, and the desire Lili and Aleksandr have for each other is mirrored in this desire for debates and discussions that challenge them both continually.
Something I greatly appreciated was how much focus there was on the dialogue throughout the entire book. The communication between Lili and Aleksandr could only be described as sharp, quick, and witty. This dialogue and their back and forth truly felt both realistic to how communication works in real life, but also felt true to the characters. And in a story that is as character-focused and -driven as this one was, the pages upon pages of conversations felt essential as a way to build the connection and bond between the characters.
Other than connecting through words, Lili and Aleksandr’s relationship is additionally, maybe even majorly, formed and strengthened through intimacy and sex. These scenes are as intense and raw as the rest of the story, and while Lili uses them as more of an escape and a way to get out of her own head, this is where we see more of Aleksandr’s intense need for her; as something more than just a good time.
The story also perfectly depicted how miscommunication and misunderstandings can arise. Because here we have two people who, on the surface, are so vastly different, but they are clearly able to communicate well. Yet we see how self-preservation and old trauma made Lili shelter her feelings and made her overall just more cautious when it came to a relationship.
And as much as this is a love story, it is at its core also a story about navigating grief. It’s about how our childhood and upbringing, and essentially our trauma, shape us into the people we become and how these lived experiences dictate the choices we make as adults. We see how trauma and self-doubt can become a permanent crutch and lead to self-sabotage and deter a person from leaning on anyone in their support system.
I also think that minimising this to simply being a romantic love story is doing it a massive disservice. The platonic love in GAMES runs parallel to the love story between Lili and Aleksandr, and it feels just as tender and real. As much as Lili faces issues in her romantic relationship, she’s also met with issues and struggles when it comes to her three close friends, and I adored seeing how strong the bond and the love between them were.
This story really did cover a vast array of themes and subjects, and all throughout Anna Maria Volkova seamlessly moved us from one topic to another: sex, economics, capitalism, history, art, domination, submission, intimacy, grief, and loss.
She deserves such high praise for her ability to weave all these elements into the story in such a natural way. A way that always felt true to our characters and their arc and development.
There's no doubt in my mind that these characters, and this story, will stay with me for a long LONG time. Anna, you are so ridiculously brilliant, please let me live inside your brain !!!!!
The publisher very kindly provided this arc through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
July 12, 2026
5 - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“You’d do well to remember, Lili: When I want things, I tend to get them.”
Games: A Love Story left me completely devastated.
It took me days to regulate my emotions so I'm able to sit down and write a coherent review for a book that left me in utter awe and agony.
While brilliantly marketed as an age-gap romance dabbling in economics, philosophy and sex—what's on the surface tends to only be the tip of the iceberg.
A casual one-night arrangement becomes the catalyst of a once-in-a-life-time, world-altering, soul-consuming affair (and I could go on...).
An affair that feels whole yet teeters on the brink of destruction, deeply intimate yet painfully raw, addictive yet dangerous, suffocating yet unleashing all at once.
All of it steeped in endless contradictions, which accurately defines Lili and Aleksandr's dynamic as they clash in intellect and principles. Yet.. what slowly unravels as their bodies are drenched in lust and vulnerability, is the revelation that the cracks left by their own grief and trauma begin to heal when they are together.
But even then, fear and doubt creeps along those cracks and could damn it all to hell.
This erotic love story by Anna Maria Volkova was written to challenge genre expectations and disorient readers that have become far too comfortable with the certainty of happily ever afters.
What I can promise is that it is not a tragic ending, but be prepared to be undone by the most devastating love affair.
On another note: highly recommend the audiobook. Jessica O'Hara-Baker is an excellent narrator.
Content warning: age gap (23 x 45), grief, cheating, rough sex, trauma, mention of death of family members.
“You’d do well to remember, Lili: When I want things, I tend to get them.”
Games: A Love Story left me completely devastated.
It took me days to regulate my emotions so I'm able to sit down and write a coherent review for a book that left me in utter awe and agony.
While brilliantly marketed as an age-gap romance dabbling in economics, philosophy and sex—what's on the surface tends to only be the tip of the iceberg.
A casual one-night arrangement becomes the catalyst of a once-in-a-life-time, world-altering, soul-consuming affair (and I could go on...).
An affair that feels whole yet teeters on the brink of destruction, deeply intimate yet painfully raw, addictive yet dangerous, suffocating yet unleashing all at once.
All of it steeped in endless contradictions, which accurately defines Lili and Aleksandr's dynamic as they clash in intellect and principles. Yet.. what slowly unravels as their bodies are drenched in lust and vulnerability, is the revelation that the cracks left by their own grief and trauma begin to heal when they are together.
But even then, fear and doubt creeps along those cracks and could damn it all to hell.
This erotic love story by Anna Maria Volkova was written to challenge genre expectations and disorient readers that have become far too comfortable with the certainty of happily ever afters.
What I can promise is that it is not a tragic ending, but be prepared to be undone by the most devastating love affair.
On another note: highly recommend the audiobook. Jessica O'Hara-Baker is an excellent narrator.
Content warning: age gap (23 x 45), grief, cheating, rough sex, trauma, mention of death of family members.
May 9, 2026
Thoughtful. Sexy. Bracingly intelligent.
Games left me bereft. How am I meant to move on?
This novel is expansive yet exacting. Socioeconomics, poetry, ethics, art, philosophy, government, power—these aren’t ornamental references; they are debated. As a former philosophy major I was helpless before their sparring.
Beneath the intellectual rigor runs raw and deeply human themes. This is a novel about pain, suffering, and grief. About vulnerability—not as weakness, but as risk. About growth that costs something.
The writing was the first thing I loved; its quality, style, and syntax—precise, daring, deliberate. There is no faster way to my heart. An unexpected turn of phrase. An adjective deployed with surgical precision. Sentences that feel engineered rather than assembled. Craft honed to a blade’s edge. I have over 200 highlights—some spanning entire pages of debate, others marking prose too sharp not to save.
It made me feel—viscerally. I shook my fist. I kicked my feet. I hoped for intervention and hoped against the inevitable. I was intellectually provoked and emotionally unraveled.
I am supremely impressed—quietly mourning that I cannot induce amnesia just to encounter Games for the first time again.
What a singular experience this was. I cannot believe this is a debut. Mark my words: Anna Maria Volkova is one to watch. I would read anything she writes.
Who would’ve thought economies and human behavior had so much in common?
Review of advance copy received from publisher.
Games left me bereft. How am I meant to move on?
This novel is expansive yet exacting. Socioeconomics, poetry, ethics, art, philosophy, government, power—these aren’t ornamental references; they are debated. As a former philosophy major I was helpless before their sparring.
Beneath the intellectual rigor runs raw and deeply human themes. This is a novel about pain, suffering, and grief. About vulnerability—not as weakness, but as risk. About growth that costs something.
The writing was the first thing I loved; its quality, style, and syntax—precise, daring, deliberate. There is no faster way to my heart. An unexpected turn of phrase. An adjective deployed with surgical precision. Sentences that feel engineered rather than assembled. Craft honed to a blade’s edge. I have over 200 highlights—some spanning entire pages of debate, others marking prose too sharp not to save.
It made me feel—viscerally. I shook my fist. I kicked my feet. I hoped for intervention and hoped against the inevitable. I was intellectually provoked and emotionally unraveled.
I am supremely impressed—quietly mourning that I cannot induce amnesia just to encounter Games for the first time again.
What a singular experience this was. I cannot believe this is a debut. Mark my words: Anna Maria Volkova is one to watch. I would read anything she writes.
Who would’ve thought economies and human behavior had so much in common?
Review of advance copy received from publisher.
March 10, 2026
I didn’t realize this book started as fanfiction, but now that I think about it, it kind of makes sense, as it reads like a mix of tropes and nerdy references stitched together into a novel, just packaged as literary fiction. I wouldn’t call reading this a painful experience, and I finished it in one sitting. I guess this book knows exactly what it’s trying to do: first and foremost, it’s an age-gap romance novel. The problem is that I didn’t really like this book being a romance….. I know that saying it like this makes little sense, but this honestly kind of summarizes it? Anyway, let me elaborate.
The story focuses on a romantic relationship between Lili, an ambitious graduate student in economics with strong leftist views, and Aleksandr, a man twenty years her senior with a neoliberal mindset typical of a 40 y.o. banker. I think the main idea the novel tries to convey – and the reason many readers might find it appealing – is that these two people are constantly pulled toward each other despite their profound differences. Numerous discussions about economics, politics and art, apart from being quite pretentious and fanfiction-coded, serve to highlight the ideological divide between them. One could even start to wonder how such a relationship could realistically function. Someone wrote that this book reads like a romance between a girl and her sugar daddy – and honestly it’s hard to argue with that.
But putting reality aside, we all know that what pulls readers to an age-gap romance is the escapist fantasy of an older, experienced man being interested in a younger woman. And since it is 2026 and not 2006, the woman isn’t completely helpless and inexperienced, but opinionated and presented as an equal partner. Fair enough. But I have a huge problem with treating this book as an escapist treat or a romantic example. Just look at what the relationship between Lili and Aleksandr actually looks like. The BDSM sex they have is so far from safe that I honestly don’t even know how to describe it apart from saying that even 50 Shades did it better. I mean - no safe words, no real communication, zero protection. Insane. This is a story about a 40 y.o. man who is supposed to be experienced and responsible. Come on. No one should fantasize about a character like that, even if he’s well-spoken, educated, and knows Russian classics. Writing BDSM like this and framing it within a romance is a cheap move if the story doesn’t really acknowledge how problematic it actually is.
What positively surprised me though, was the clear stance this narrative takes on the Russian regime. Speaking frankly about contemporary Russia as it is – an authoritarian, repressive, and aggressive state, is still uncommon in Western media and literature. Anna Maria Volkova neither romanticizes Russian oligarchs nor does she dilute the topic, which is a big plus.
To be fair, there’s some character growth on Lili’s part – and this is probably why the book may be considered a coming-of-age story. But for me, it wasn’t enough, especially given how the book ends. So, three stars it is.
Thank You NetGalley and Orion Publishing Group for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
The story focuses on a romantic relationship between Lili, an ambitious graduate student in economics with strong leftist views, and Aleksandr, a man twenty years her senior with a neoliberal mindset typical of a 40 y.o. banker. I think the main idea the novel tries to convey – and the reason many readers might find it appealing – is that these two people are constantly pulled toward each other despite their profound differences. Numerous discussions about economics, politics and art, apart from being quite pretentious and fanfiction-coded, serve to highlight the ideological divide between them. One could even start to wonder how such a relationship could realistically function. Someone wrote that this book reads like a romance between a girl and her sugar daddy – and honestly it’s hard to argue with that.
But putting reality aside, we all know that what pulls readers to an age-gap romance is the escapist fantasy of an older, experienced man being interested in a younger woman. And since it is 2026 and not 2006, the woman isn’t completely helpless and inexperienced, but opinionated and presented as an equal partner. Fair enough. But I have a huge problem with treating this book as an escapist treat or a romantic example. Just look at what the relationship between Lili and Aleksandr actually looks like. The BDSM sex they have is so far from safe that I honestly don’t even know how to describe it apart from saying that even 50 Shades did it better. I mean - no safe words, no real communication, zero protection. Insane. This is a story about a 40 y.o. man who is supposed to be experienced and responsible. Come on. No one should fantasize about a character like that, even if he’s well-spoken, educated, and knows Russian classics. Writing BDSM like this and framing it within a romance is a cheap move if the story doesn’t really acknowledge how problematic it actually is.
What positively surprised me though, was the clear stance this narrative takes on the Russian regime. Speaking frankly about contemporary Russia as it is – an authoritarian, repressive, and aggressive state, is still uncommon in Western media and literature. Anna Maria Volkova neither romanticizes Russian oligarchs nor does she dilute the topic, which is a big plus.
To be fair, there’s some character growth on Lili’s part – and this is probably why the book may be considered a coming-of-age story. But for me, it wasn’t enough, especially given how the book ends. So, three stars it is.
Thank You NetGalley and Orion Publishing Group for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
April 8, 2026
Thank you to Anna Maria Volkova, Harper Collins, & NetGalley for digital & physical galley’s of this book in exchange for my honest review.
DNF’d at 42%. I’m sorry, I really don’t like to DNF because I prefer to wholly read something but this did not vibe with me. Full review based on what I read below, *possible spoilers*.
⭐️
🌶️🌶️
I was originally excited because based on the summary it seemed like something I would naturally be interested in. I remember being younger and stealing my mother’s ‘50 Shades of Gray’ copy and really enjoying it so I figured I would think this was decent. I am so sorry but this was so so so exhausting & boring. I am over 150 pages in and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. The writing is repetitive and feels like it’s more fluff than substance. We are still having the same capitalist vs for the greater good argument. The same group chat going off about partying. The same dilemma of thesis, work, or party. Let’s move the story along! I completely HATED the MMC. He puts his own comfort above basic needs for the rest of humanity. He is a trash human with a worthless opinion. I do not feel there is anything the author could write into the book to redeem his character. The FMC was also annoying. By all means, please advocate for those who can’t and help bring a positive change to the world but she is exactly the type of person that gives progressives and liberals the *crazy Marxist* personas so many fear to even listen to. She is coming on way too strong and aggressive from the get go. Also their spicy scenes. I hate how there was no talk about limits or comfort beforehand, why are you just choking this girl you just met????? You are 20+ years older than her, you would think he would know how to be a respectful dom???? No, he’s an asshole. There’s also no aftercare or checking in. All they do is fight about economics & Russian literature and then have borderline non-consensual sex. At 42% I could not bear to read further. I’m so sorry Harper Collins— please don’t blacklist me from your book mail or widgets, this just wasn’t the vibe for me.
DNF’d at 42%. I’m sorry, I really don’t like to DNF because I prefer to wholly read something but this did not vibe with me. Full review based on what I read below, *possible spoilers*.
⭐️
🌶️🌶️
I was originally excited because based on the summary it seemed like something I would naturally be interested in. I remember being younger and stealing my mother’s ‘50 Shades of Gray’ copy and really enjoying it so I figured I would think this was decent. I am so sorry but this was so so so exhausting & boring. I am over 150 pages in and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. The writing is repetitive and feels like it’s more fluff than substance. We are still having the same capitalist vs for the greater good argument. The same group chat going off about partying. The same dilemma of thesis, work, or party. Let’s move the story along! I completely HATED the MMC. He puts his own comfort above basic needs for the rest of humanity. He is a trash human with a worthless opinion. I do not feel there is anything the author could write into the book to redeem his character. The FMC was also annoying. By all means, please advocate for those who can’t and help bring a positive change to the world but she is exactly the type of person that gives progressives and liberals the *crazy Marxist* personas so many fear to even listen to. She is coming on way too strong and aggressive from the get go. Also their spicy scenes. I hate how there was no talk about limits or comfort beforehand, why are you just choking this girl you just met????? You are 20+ years older than her, you would think he would know how to be a respectful dom???? No, he’s an asshole. There’s also no aftercare or checking in. All they do is fight about economics & Russian literature and then have borderline non-consensual sex. At 42% I could not bear to read further. I’m so sorry Harper Collins— please don’t blacklist me from your book mail or widgets, this just wasn’t the vibe for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 31, 2026
Loser on loser crime
Review of advance copy received from Author
there are so many things about this book that make it a “sanj” book: the way they argue themselves into falling in love, the way they relish in friction, the way they talk about power. but the thing i’m thinking about most is how the book is kind of an exercise in hegelian dialectics— not just in the content of their conversations but in the substance of the way they fall in love. that they are constantly confronted with dialectical skepticism that shatters and remakes them anew over and over. it’s in the architecture of the novel as much as it is in individual lines of dialogue- when aleksandr declares that optimism is a young person’s virtue but allows himself to hold that optimism in the very end for himself and lili- when lili decides that she is destined to be just outside of everyone else but allows herself to be on the inside with him in the very end. even in the way that their ending feels triumphant and like a surrender, like they are happily ever after and also that “happiness” is costing them both something by way of their principles. true bitter sweetness!! gemini season book for the ages !!
and I know that is tiresome for some people to read and I know this book will be divisive and I get why there is uncertainty about marketing this as a romance and I think I just don’t care. the beating heart of this book is too fucking good for that to matter (though the paris chapters could have been shorter).
better comps, in my opinion, are Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood & The Idiot by Elif Batuman.
and I know that is tiresome for some people to read and I know this book will be divisive and I get why there is uncertainty about marketing this as a romance and I think I just don’t care. the beating heart of this book is too fucking good for that to matter (though the paris chapters could have been shorter).
better comps, in my opinion, are Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood & The Idiot by Elif Batuman.
July 6, 2026
My expectations were high and my expectations were met. Lili is a socialist grad student and Aleksandr is the wealthy Wall Street neocapitalist with whom she embarks on a heady summer romance: Karl Marx with more kissing.
I have a lot of thoughts on this book.
The Positive:
Games is one of the best-written romances I've ever read. Volkova has this gift in patching together a series of images, sounds, and smells/flavors into a scene that would read as immature in the hands of another author, but she knows exactly how much to lay it on and when to hold back. The dialogue: realistic, witty, legitimately funny and charming. The sex: hot. and specific! Lili believes in a world with safety nets and support structures on principle, but struggles to apply that same grace to herself. Aleksandr wants everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but can't help but care for the people who need him. Sex and politics are indistinguishable in Games, and Volkova balances them with a mastery that reminds me of Cecilia Grant. I told a friend that this is a book people are going to claim is literary fiction, not romance, because they don't imagine romance is capable of this kind of nuance, skill, and...can I say bleakness lol? But a romance it is.
The Blah:
As a few others have said, there's something off about the pacing here. The Paris scenes drag, and several of the plotlines that receive heavy emphasis in the front half are resolved quickly later on, leaving them feeling unequal and vaguely unfinished. While the scenes where Lili is hanging out with her friends are among the most vibrant in the book, I never really get a grasp for who her friends are. They all feel a bit interchangeable. As an extremely personal and pointless take, I'm also fatigued with books that are About New York. I'm not sure how I've picked up so many romance novels that are About New York, but?? They frustrate me. It's not that Games does a poor job of discussing what New York symbolizes to the characters (it does a very good job of this!), but there's a sense of....name dropping of restaurants and subway lines here that rings hollow. Someone should start referencing MARTA stations in books with the same expectation of understanding that authors do with NYC.
The Disappointing:
A trend I've come to recognize in romance books is an overexplanation of interiority for female characters coupled with a lack of curiosity about male characters. Games spends an abundance of time exploring why Lili is interested in a submissive role: what it offers her that other relationships can't, how she's safe and protected in spite of/because of it, and more subtly how to develops her character over the course of the story. But we get almost nothing of the same on Aleksandr's part. Why does he want to be dominant? What does he get out of it? We know why Lili wants to be hurt, but why does Aleksandr want to do the hurting? I don't think the book needs to turn to the reader and explain away its core dynamic, but in a story that is already so aware of Lili's interiority, to have nothing from Aleksandr in that regard feels unbalanced.
This won't be a book for everyone. It stressed me OUT. I kept thinking about every friend of mine who starts seeing a guy and vanishes for months until the relationship is settled. It doesn't help to be upset. You just have to be there to support them after, whatever that looks like.
Thanks to William Morrow for the ARC/finished copy. Views are my own.
I have a lot of thoughts on this book.
The Positive:
Games is one of the best-written romances I've ever read. Volkova has this gift in patching together a series of images, sounds, and smells/flavors into a scene that would read as immature in the hands of another author, but she knows exactly how much to lay it on and when to hold back. The dialogue: realistic, witty, legitimately funny and charming. The sex: hot. and specific! Lili believes in a world with safety nets and support structures on principle, but struggles to apply that same grace to herself. Aleksandr wants everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but can't help but care for the people who need him. Sex and politics are indistinguishable in Games, and Volkova balances them with a mastery that reminds me of Cecilia Grant. I told a friend that this is a book people are going to claim is literary fiction, not romance, because they don't imagine romance is capable of this kind of nuance, skill, and...can I say bleakness lol? But a romance it is.
The Blah:
As a few others have said, there's something off about the pacing here. The Paris scenes drag, and several of the plotlines that receive heavy emphasis in the front half are resolved quickly later on, leaving them feeling unequal and vaguely unfinished. While the scenes where Lili is hanging out with her friends are among the most vibrant in the book, I never really get a grasp for who her friends are. They all feel a bit interchangeable. As an extremely personal and pointless take, I'm also fatigued with books that are About New York. I'm not sure how I've picked up so many romance novels that are About New York, but?? They frustrate me. It's not that Games does a poor job of discussing what New York symbolizes to the characters (it does a very good job of this!), but there's a sense of....name dropping of restaurants and subway lines here that rings hollow. Someone should start referencing MARTA stations in books with the same expectation of understanding that authors do with NYC.
The Disappointing:
A trend I've come to recognize in romance books is an overexplanation of interiority for female characters coupled with a lack of curiosity about male characters. Games spends an abundance of time exploring why Lili is interested in a submissive role: what it offers her that other relationships can't, how she's safe and protected in spite of/because of it, and more subtly how to develops her character over the course of the story. But we get almost nothing of the same on Aleksandr's part. Why does he want to be dominant? What does he get out of it? We know why Lili wants to be hurt, but why does Aleksandr want to do the hurting? I don't think the book needs to turn to the reader and explain away its core dynamic, but in a story that is already so aware of Lili's interiority, to have nothing from Aleksandr in that regard feels unbalanced.
This won't be a book for everyone. It stressed me OUT. I kept thinking about every friend of mine who starts seeing a guy and vanishes for months until the relationship is settled. It doesn't help to be upset. You just have to be there to support them after, whatever that looks like.
Thanks to William Morrow for the ARC/finished copy. Views are my own.
July 3, 2026
DNF @ 15%
this book has a lot to say about the free market, neoliberalism and the western hegemony so far and yet we know she’s going to end up with this unlikeable detestable billionaire so what’s the point? He’s going to continue to say shit like ““Nations aren’t always best positioned to preserve their own legacies.” blah blah blah and I find the entire premise super hypocritical. It’s like you want to have your cake and eat it too because on the one hand you go on about how exploitative, disgusting and reprehensible billionaires are and show off all that economic theory you’ve consumed but that goes out the window because you fell in love with this particular sad boï traumatised billionaire so it’s all okay? I’m sure he isn’t going to give up all his money and go live on a commune for her and she will ultimately benefit and so far has benefited from his money so which one is it? do billionaires suck or do they not? You criticise the fantasy but at the end of the day package it and sell it and reinforce it. I hope there’s character development on both their ends but I just don’t care for it at the moment, especially because we know how horribly the world is falling apart because of people like Aleksander. And maybe it isn’t that deep but I can’t deal with this kind of hypocrisy anymore
Also he at one points says “the free market is us all” fuck right off with the reductive bullshit
this book has a lot to say about the free market, neoliberalism and the western hegemony so far and yet we know she’s going to end up with this unlikeable detestable billionaire so what’s the point? He’s going to continue to say shit like ““Nations aren’t always best positioned to preserve their own legacies.” blah blah blah and I find the entire premise super hypocritical. It’s like you want to have your cake and eat it too because on the one hand you go on about how exploitative, disgusting and reprehensible billionaires are and show off all that economic theory you’ve consumed but that goes out the window because you fell in love with this particular sad boï traumatised billionaire so it’s all okay? I’m sure he isn’t going to give up all his money and go live on a commune for her and she will ultimately benefit and so far has benefited from his money so which one is it? do billionaires suck or do they not? You criticise the fantasy but at the end of the day package it and sell it and reinforce it. I hope there’s character development on both their ends but I just don’t care for it at the moment, especially because we know how horribly the world is falling apart because of people like Aleksander. And maybe it isn’t that deep but I can’t deal with this kind of hypocrisy anymore
Also he at one points says “the free market is us all” fuck right off with the reductive bullshit
July 1, 2026
Dear lord. This was pure, unending, drivel
July 18, 2026
2.5 stars
Well, I came to this because I'd seen it billed as being an intelligent exploration of kink, power, and capitalism - but actually it's a dark romance that follows a fairly typical template: sassy, young, New Yorker meets a beautiful, older billionaire and falls for his rough sex magic while enjoying his chauffeur-driven, loft-living, 'I bought the whole building so I can have peace' lifestyle. Only - of course - Lili's upbeat, cheeky, confident persona is all a front and inside she's a mess of vulnerabilities, fears and neuroses...
So much about this relationship is actually toxic: the scary sexual choking about which there is no discussion and, therefore, no consent - and which Lili secretly desires because it's a more extreme form of self-abuse/near self-destruction. This isn't kink, it's something twisted and dark. We understand why Lili wants this form of self-abnegation but what does Aleksandre get from this sexualised violence? There's no exploration of his psyche.
Also the much discussed 'opposites attract' plays out here in economic clashes: he's some kind of famous billionaire venture capital/fund manager who has a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest attitude towards global finance and thinks the losers have only themselves to blame for not working the system; she's a leftist ideologue writing a master's dissertation. There's definitely an erotic spark at the start as sassy Lili argues herself into his bed, but all of that falls away and becomes irrelevant to both the book and their age-differential relationship: she's 22, he's 45. Instead, they bond over Solzenitsyn's Cancer Ward!
There's a long, long, final third diversion based on a ridiculous leap of assumption from Lili that surely only ever happens in books?
I enjoyed the first third or so when Lili was smart and confident and upbeat: why do romances have to break down their heroines, turning them into a needy, weepy mess before they can 'get their man'?
So in the end, all the provocative stuff about kink, power, money, capitalism fizzles away and we're left with a rather mundane 'dark romance'. I had to laugh that by the end, after the choking, the painful sex, the drama and the angst, he finally asks if she wants to use a condom! And she completely forgets her political principles (which seem to be based on book learning, anyway, not lived principles) tucking herself up cosily in that gorgeous penthouse/loft, wallowing in silk sheets and shirts - pah!
Well, I came to this because I'd seen it billed as being an intelligent exploration of kink, power, and capitalism - but actually it's a dark romance that follows a fairly typical template: sassy, young, New Yorker meets a beautiful, older billionaire and falls for his rough sex magic while enjoying his chauffeur-driven, loft-living, 'I bought the whole building so I can have peace' lifestyle. Only - of course - Lili's upbeat, cheeky, confident persona is all a front and inside she's a mess of vulnerabilities, fears and neuroses...
So much about this relationship is actually toxic: the scary sexual choking about which there is no discussion and, therefore, no consent - and which Lili secretly desires because it's a more extreme form of self-abuse/near self-destruction. This isn't kink, it's something twisted and dark. We understand why Lili wants this form of self-abnegation but what does Aleksandre get from this sexualised violence? There's no exploration of his psyche.
Also the much discussed 'opposites attract' plays out here in economic clashes: he's some kind of famous billionaire venture capital/fund manager who has a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest attitude towards global finance and thinks the losers have only themselves to blame for not working the system; she's a leftist ideologue writing a master's dissertation. There's definitely an erotic spark at the start as sassy Lili argues herself into his bed, but all of that falls away and becomes irrelevant to both the book and their age-differential relationship: she's 22, he's 45. Instead, they bond over Solzenitsyn's Cancer Ward!
There's a long, long, final third diversion based on a ridiculous leap of assumption from Lili that surely only ever happens in books?
I enjoyed the first third or so when Lili was smart and confident and upbeat: why do romances have to break down their heroines, turning them into a needy, weepy mess before they can 'get their man'?
So in the end, all the provocative stuff about kink, power, money, capitalism fizzles away and we're left with a rather mundane 'dark romance'. I had to laugh that by the end, after the choking, the painful sex, the drama and the angst, he finally asks if she wants to use a condom! And she completely forgets her political principles (which seem to be based on book learning, anyway, not lived principles) tucking herself up cosily in that gorgeous penthouse/loft, wallowing in silk sheets and shirts - pah!
July 2, 2026
it isn't often that i have a book reach deep within me and pull, demanding me to engage. even less often that i feel this seen and splayed open, which is perhaps why i read in the first place.
games is a literary romance set in new york city, soaked with summer rain in inescapable heat, focusing on our two main characters: lili marwan and aleksandr petrov. lili, a democratic socialist in grad school, drowning in the grief of her parents; and aleksandr, an older wallstreet banker, fiercly neoliberal capitalist, who escaped the soviet union at a young age.
i am (to a fault) what most people would probably consider a political person, and this scratched an itch in my brain i didn't know i'd been looking for. lili and aleksandr's verbal sparring felt like watching two sides of myself play tug of war, waiting to see who would win out. and, unlike many books i've read recently, it demands something of the reader- it requires you to think, rather than simply handing information over to you. immensely refreshing.
games was sold to me as sex meets economics, and it is, but it's also about what it means to crack yourself open and let it all spill out. what your hands could hold if you let go of pain, and the strange peace that comes with surviving something. but more importantly, to build a life afterward. the ways in which we clutch power to ours chests, even to our own detriment. to let people love you. the exploration of grief and mental health, healing and friendship, and love itself had me sobbing. no, actually. like, blubbering.
it had so many of my favorite things squeezed in. european summers, novels and records, ART, dinners with friends. and, listen, as soon as the first date he took her on was a night inside the closed MET - i'm sorry. i'd seen enough. sold. and, my god. anna's writing? to die for. the descriptions, the internal monologues, i couldn't get enough. she wrote two raw characters who would do anything for one another, and i couldn't look away. i already can't wait to reread.
thank you william morrow books + anna for the free copy!
games is a literary romance set in new york city, soaked with summer rain in inescapable heat, focusing on our two main characters: lili marwan and aleksandr petrov. lili, a democratic socialist in grad school, drowning in the grief of her parents; and aleksandr, an older wallstreet banker, fiercly neoliberal capitalist, who escaped the soviet union at a young age.
i am (to a fault) what most people would probably consider a political person, and this scratched an itch in my brain i didn't know i'd been looking for. lili and aleksandr's verbal sparring felt like watching two sides of myself play tug of war, waiting to see who would win out. and, unlike many books i've read recently, it demands something of the reader- it requires you to think, rather than simply handing information over to you. immensely refreshing.
games was sold to me as sex meets economics, and it is, but it's also about what it means to crack yourself open and let it all spill out. what your hands could hold if you let go of pain, and the strange peace that comes with surviving something. but more importantly, to build a life afterward. the ways in which we clutch power to ours chests, even to our own detriment. to let people love you. the exploration of grief and mental health, healing and friendship, and love itself had me sobbing. no, actually. like, blubbering.
it had so many of my favorite things squeezed in. european summers, novels and records, ART, dinners with friends. and, listen, as soon as the first date he took her on was a night inside the closed MET - i'm sorry. i'd seen enough. sold. and, my god. anna's writing? to die for. the descriptions, the internal monologues, i couldn't get enough. she wrote two raw characters who would do anything for one another, and i couldn't look away. i already can't wait to reread.
thank you william morrow books + anna for the free copy!
July 8, 2026
4.5***
okay yes this is sexy and heady and incredibly intelligent but it’s also devastating and introspective and you will cry more than you expect
okay yes this is sexy and heady and incredibly intelligent but it’s also devastating and introspective and you will cry more than you expect
July 17, 2026
Yeah, I don’t know. I get what this book was trying to do and I mean, I struggled to put it down, so there is that. But half of this book screams “I’m trying to write a book that sounds smart and academic”, and I honestly zoned off a lot during those parts.
There is a lot of sex, but it is a huge factor to the plot, so that’s fine. My problem is, why are we romanticizing this? They literally never talk about a safe word, talk about protection after they’ve already been *very* active…I get it on the FMC’s part, but the way the MMC is described…in his 40s, HUNDREDS of partners, wealthy with access to anything he wants—it’s hard to buy in.
And while I get why Lili does what she does…it was just irredeemable for me so I struggled with the ending.
That said, I was addicted to the toxicity presented here so not sure what that says about me lol.
There is a lot of sex, but it is a huge factor to the plot, so that’s fine. My problem is, why are we romanticizing this? They literally never talk about a safe word, talk about protection after they’ve already been *very* active…I get it on the FMC’s part, but the way the MMC is described…in his 40s, HUNDREDS of partners, wealthy with access to anything he wants—it’s hard to buy in.
And while I get why Lili does what she does…it was just irredeemable for me so I struggled with the ending.
That said, I was addicted to the toxicity presented here so not sure what that says about me lol.
Read
June 5, 2026Normal People meets Fifty Shades of Grey is actually pretty apt! For me it dragged a bit in the middle, but i was SO invested for the final third — i think the "girl who can't commit fully because she never learned how to trust relationships from a young age" is unfortunately a microtrope that speaks to me. They are such different books I can't truly compare but if the relationship dynamics in Abby Jimenez' Just For The Summer appealed to you, this has a lot of similarities on paper. Very different vibes though.
Romance continues to be the most fun genre, truly the competition is not even close!!
Romance continues to be the most fun genre, truly the competition is not even close!!
July 19, 2026
Trauma Without Psychology, Knowledge Without Intellect, and the Neoliberal Extraction of Readerly Labor in Games: A Love Story
[spoilers throughout]
Who needs therapy when you can achieve mental wellbeing through asphyxiation?
Games: A Love Story is about a young woman pin dropping her way through New York City in search of a good choke. Dangerous sex leads to emotional revelation, quoting at each other is chemistry, and Helmut Lang is a personality trait. Games is decorated with depth without actually ever going there.
It begins all right, though I never really found myself getting curious or invested, especially when the plot reveals itself as a machine of convenience. Lili is introduced as a brilliant, politically engaged economics grad student carrying profound grief from the childhood deaths of her parents and subsequent upbringing in foster care. That’s plenty for a complex character with a rich interior life. However, Lili is just a collection of attributes that don’t metabolize into a convincing character. Ideological positions, trauma, sexual extremity, vegan with strong opinions on almond and oat, and all-around exceptionalism.
Volkova paints Lili as both the smartest and most wounded person in every room while protecting her from meaningful accountability. Professors praise her thesis as publishable and push her towards early graduation. Established professionals are told that she knows more about economics than they do. James’s parents want to help advance her career. The farm that she neglects the entire first half of the book offers her a salaried position. The sole purpose of Lili’s friend group is to dress her in avant-garde, Uber her from bar to bar, and remind her of her greatness. Grief and personal experiences are used to justify her selfishness or hypocrisy. Lili is rude to people who don’t deserve it, wildly contradictory about wealth and privilege, and lacking in self-awareness.
The friendships deserve their own criticism. Retrospective anecdotes are periodically sprinkled in to show intimacy, such as Lili and James nearly hooking up before knocking over a photograph of his dead mother and trauma-bonding instead. In reality, Lili’s friends are just a group chat chorus, there to move the plot along. History is not the same as closeness, especially when the present often shows Lili neglecting her friends’ milestones.
Lili misses James’s birthday dinner because she’s with Aleksandr. She behaves appallingly at a fundraiser hosted by James’s parents, argues with their guests and has sex in James’s childhood bedroom, loudly against the door. James laughs it off because Lili is fun. She forgets about Amina’s first gallery opening until Michael interrupts a night with Aleksandr. She buys last-minute flowers at a bodega, the novel cuts away before she even speaks to Amina, and then sends Lili right back between Aleksandr’s sheets. Amina’s artwork is later filtered through direct comparison to other renowned artists, and we never get Lili’s genuine interpretation of it.
The foster family and cultural material is arranged around convenience as well. Lili insists she was never truly wanted, but it’s Jane who reminds her of the anniversary of her parents’ deaths, has preserved photographs and belongings, and recalls Lili’s childhood qualities fondly. Robert taught Lili to drive and built her a bookshelf because he knew she loved reading. Jane even sends Lili honey from the family garden, and I got the impression Lili’s love of farming was influenced by her connection to the garden. Their choice not to adopt her could absolutely have caused lasting pain, even if Jane and Robert believed they were acting according to their personal philosophy. But Games is more interested in preserving Lili as cosmically abandoned than in allowing her to confront a mixed reality in which she was hurt and cared for at the same time.
Her Lebanese heritage activates whenever the plot needs it to. She retains childhood French that she hasn’t spoken since the age of six, remembers highly detailed family conversations 17 years later, and can miraculously prepare a Middle Eastern dish she hasn’t eaten in just as long. Meanwhile, her white father is described simply as “American,” given almost no identity beyond his devotion to her Middle Eastern mother, and his family is absent from every discussion of possible relatives. Lili bears her mother’s maiden name to preserve that family line, while the novel treats her father’s as though it never existed. Additionally, the story avoids examining the privileges or identity complications of Lili’s own proximity to whiteness while she relentlessly interrogates Aleksandr’s.
The absence of a convincing inner life extends to the city as filtered through Lili. New York City feels like a Gen Z influencer’s Mapstr. There are bars, restaurants, and street names, but every location is a social or aesthetic credential. A convincing NYC comes alive through relationships to people and memories, like a bartender who knows Lili’s favorite cocktail, or a place that alters how she thinks of a specific neighborhood. Instead, Volkova offers the city up like a guidebook to downtown, wildly impersonal despite every venue being named. If you switch Buvette, Forsyth Street or Williamsburg with any other place in any other city, next to nothing about the characters or the story would change.
Like Lili, Aleksandr is also constructed from a long list of prestige traits: billionaire financier, Russian Oxford grad, and reader of serious literature. His record collection consists of Buckley, Vysotsky, and Gilberto. Rembrandt and Basquiat artwork hang in his guest bedrooms. Most importantly, he is a sexual god wearing a half-buttoned Charvet. He’s too busy for television, but found the time to sleep with 300-400 women and men in the 1990s. These logistics are more interesting than the romance itself. Michael functions as Aleksandr’s corporate henchman, appearing to “restore order” and treat Lili like both a plague and a threat to Aleksandr’s success. When the relationship needs emotional reinforcement, Michael becomes the hagiographer who supplies Aleksandr’s tragic childhood history and a glowing testimony to his character (“That boy—this man—saved his life, and mine.”). Like Lili’s friends, Michael plays the role of narrative infrastructure.
Both Lili and Aleksandr adopt new qualities or have things revealed exactly when the plot requires it. Lili is interested in astrology and crystals, but only to point out flaws in birth charts and energy. She becomes a habitual runner only when a scene on page 359 needs her to go out and clear her mind. Aleksandr’s environmental conscience is revealed through work emails printed in enormous font and conveniently left where Lili can see phrases about fossil-fuel divestment from across the room. He gets a facial scar that Lili somehow never notices until Chapter 7, and it’s packaged with a cute puppy backstory. It’s all by design, showing up right when Volkova needs Lili to fall harder for him.
The intellectual dialogue is positioned as one of Games’s biggest selling points but was, for me, a considerable weakness. Lili and Aleksandr speak at length about free markets, neoliberalism, democratic socialism, and the list goes on. The conversations are dense with names, theories, terminology, definitions, and buzzwords. It sounds intelligent until you realize all they’re doing is paraphrasing things already said by the greats:
“You agree with Gramsci and Foucault?”
“Without Luther’s vocational calling…”
“How Hobbesian.”
They cite Marx, Fromm, Koestler and whoever else appears on a graduate-level reading list. The dialogue reads like it required a bibliography to construct rather than arising naturally from two minds. Lili and Aleksandr are incredibly knowledgeable, but intelligence requires curiosity, interpretation, creation. They generate little that is new when they talk, and the conversations all follow an exhausting cadence, the same positions, and the same insults about capitalist pigs for pages on end.
The farm, Lili’s supposed true passion, is the agricultural version of many previously presented gripes. For roughly half the book “the farm” is a vague recurring noun. Only later do we learn Lili’s been involved with it since undergrad and is just great at everything she does there. When the story finally has her engage with the work, we get a list of vegetable varieties and even more people declaring that Lili has already raised every smart point they might have made. Despite missing several shifts, Lili is told she is uniquely capable of helping the farm’s organization grow domestically. As usual, her brilliance is certified by a gold sticker. We’re expected to believe Lili loves the farm without it ever having been presented as such.
This also paints a strange portrait of someone invested in fresh food systems. Lili eats out every meal, shops at Citarella, lectures about food deserts, and has no real relationship to the ethics she loudly professes unless the current conversation needs her to rip on someone (usually Aleksandr). She’s supposed to be financially insecure and uncomfortable benefiting from wealth, yet all her friends are rich and she recognizes every expensive item in sight, be it fashion labels or interior designers. She eats and drinks throughout New York City as though budgeting were theoretical, lives in gentrified Williamsburg on a TA’s salary, accepts borrowed luxury garments and trips, and enjoys the comforts wealth provides while condemning the people who provide them.
Then there’s the matter of the sex, which I can only describe as unenjoyable and unerotic. Having your clothes ripped off might seem titillating at first, but every scene follows a recycled Skinemax script. An argument leads to hair pulling, to penetration, to choking, and sometimes a bath. Lili and Aleksandr’s sexual vocabulary consists largely of “right there,” “harder,” “Jesus,” and variations on “take it.” Volkova spends absolutely no time building genuine desire, curiosity, teasing or discovery between the couple. The book’s idea of foreplay is hostility followed by Aleksandr demanding Lili get on the bed. We are asked to treat explicitness as intimacy and Lili’s tears as emotional closeness.
More seriously, the sexual boundaries are alarming. Aleksandr initiates sexual contact while Lili is asleep and hungover. He chokes her without first establishing consent, repeatedly leaves bruises around her neck, and her consciousness slips on more than one occasion. Only after hundreds of pages and several ejaculations does Aleksandr ask if they need to use a condom. This is the same man who coldly said “Is that a problem?” when revealing his body count was nearly 400 in a single decade. The same man who provided no recent STI test to prove he’s clean.
My dislike for the book sharpened in Chapter 6, when a violent sexual encounter transforms the relationship and the story’s emotional temperature abruptly. Suddenly, Aleksandr is tender. Suddenly, Lili wants to learn everything about him despite spending the first half of the book arguing “it’s just sex.” Lili romanticizes the encounter, attributing it to her rebirth and newfound mental clarity. Breath becomes a frequently repeated symbol of her resurrection. Later, in a Parisian church, Lili converts Aleksandr’s ability to asphyxiate her “correctly” into a form of discipline and spiritual purification. Physical pain becomes her faith. Suffocation becomes her penance.
Eventually, Lili exchanges roughly three words with a man at a bar before asking him to leave with her. He resembles a younger, more age-appropriate Aleksandr, which is apparently reason enough to cheat. She spends the entire encounter cringing and comparing him to Aleksandr, yet goes through with it anyway. That was the moment I knew Games had nothing redeeming left to offer. The narrative immediately positions Lili as someone in need of saving, and her friends gather around her like a broken bird. Lili sobs into a mug of tea while they pack her bags and whisk her away to Paris and the South of France so that she can recover from hurting someone else. This is framed as another breakthrough in which Lili finally lacks the strength to refuse the care people want to give her. And only at this point does the story remember that Lili has a bank account, which she nearly empties to pay for the first-class ticket. If only she hadn’t missed all those shifts at the farm.
From this point, the story could no longer hide behind rapid-fire debates and performatively transgressive sex. It depends entirely on Lili’s interiority, but it never offered up a truly plausible reason for her to destroy the relationship in the first place. Volkova supplies justification for cheating only after the act, and even that evolves as the story progresses. Initially, it is the fear Aleksandr would do it first, despite him establishing early on that cheating was a dealbreaker. Then it's the concern he wouldn’t make space for her in his life even though he has done so for much of the book. Lastly comes the worry that, after 1.5 months of dating, he might not marry Lili in the future.
Her grief and guilt over the breakup are expressed through melodrama. Cigarettes and mirrors, more breathing and suffocation, the inability to look at any man with dark brown hair. Lili runs through the streets of Paris sobbing in the rain, and almost kisses a woman just so she can feel someone’s touch again. The volume of theatrics rises but the psyche never deepens. The climax lifts the curtain on how weak Lili’s interiority has been throughout the entire book. France is not where she meaningfully confronts her actions, but where the novel proves it never built the emotional architecture necessary either to explain why Lili did it or to let us see her grow from it.
Only in France does Amina finally tell Lili that she has a victim mentality, that she keeps her life too private, and that she cannot continue destroying herself. It’s exactly the confrontation the story deserves earlier, but it arrives only when the plot needs a friendship rupture. However, it quickly softens into cuddling, reassurance, and another promise from Lili that she will be more open. The novel continually announces transformation and then reverses it within pages. Lili learns pain ends, then decides pain never ends. She accepts friendship, then pushes everyone away. She lets Aleksandr go, then bawls at the airport that she cannot. She is healed, breathing, free, happy, devastated, numb, and resurrected in rapid rotation. Her development expires at the end of each scene, along with my patience for these games.
What ultimately sinks the book isn’t just that the ending is mostly predictable and poorly resolved, but that it is genuinely uncomfortable to read. Lili arrives intending to apologize, and Aleksandr responds with an even more extreme display of humiliation and aggression, which the novel again frames as transformative and healing. Rather than interrogating the relationship at the last possible moment, the ending doubles down on its ugliest dynamics and mistakes escalation for payoff. The ending is a total market collapse, leaving the reader holding a profoundly toxic asset.
Perhaps that is Volkova’s true genius after all. Games: A Love Story may be the most convincing argument against neoliberalism we’ll ever encounter. The reader supplies the labor, the novel extracts the time, Lili and Aleksandr’s debates are the means of production, the sex scenes are unpaid overtime, and Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward describes the working conditions.
[spoilers throughout]
Who needs therapy when you can achieve mental wellbeing through asphyxiation?
Games: A Love Story is about a young woman pin dropping her way through New York City in search of a good choke. Dangerous sex leads to emotional revelation, quoting at each other is chemistry, and Helmut Lang is a personality trait. Games is decorated with depth without actually ever going there.
It begins all right, though I never really found myself getting curious or invested, especially when the plot reveals itself as a machine of convenience. Lili is introduced as a brilliant, politically engaged economics grad student carrying profound grief from the childhood deaths of her parents and subsequent upbringing in foster care. That’s plenty for a complex character with a rich interior life. However, Lili is just a collection of attributes that don’t metabolize into a convincing character. Ideological positions, trauma, sexual extremity, vegan with strong opinions on almond and oat, and all-around exceptionalism.
Volkova paints Lili as both the smartest and most wounded person in every room while protecting her from meaningful accountability. Professors praise her thesis as publishable and push her towards early graduation. Established professionals are told that she knows more about economics than they do. James’s parents want to help advance her career. The farm that she neglects the entire first half of the book offers her a salaried position. The sole purpose of Lili’s friend group is to dress her in avant-garde, Uber her from bar to bar, and remind her of her greatness. Grief and personal experiences are used to justify her selfishness or hypocrisy. Lili is rude to people who don’t deserve it, wildly contradictory about wealth and privilege, and lacking in self-awareness.
The friendships deserve their own criticism. Retrospective anecdotes are periodically sprinkled in to show intimacy, such as Lili and James nearly hooking up before knocking over a photograph of his dead mother and trauma-bonding instead. In reality, Lili’s friends are just a group chat chorus, there to move the plot along. History is not the same as closeness, especially when the present often shows Lili neglecting her friends’ milestones.
Lili misses James’s birthday dinner because she’s with Aleksandr. She behaves appallingly at a fundraiser hosted by James’s parents, argues with their guests and has sex in James’s childhood bedroom, loudly against the door. James laughs it off because Lili is fun. She forgets about Amina’s first gallery opening until Michael interrupts a night with Aleksandr. She buys last-minute flowers at a bodega, the novel cuts away before she even speaks to Amina, and then sends Lili right back between Aleksandr’s sheets. Amina’s artwork is later filtered through direct comparison to other renowned artists, and we never get Lili’s genuine interpretation of it.
The foster family and cultural material is arranged around convenience as well. Lili insists she was never truly wanted, but it’s Jane who reminds her of the anniversary of her parents’ deaths, has preserved photographs and belongings, and recalls Lili’s childhood qualities fondly. Robert taught Lili to drive and built her a bookshelf because he knew she loved reading. Jane even sends Lili honey from the family garden, and I got the impression Lili’s love of farming was influenced by her connection to the garden. Their choice not to adopt her could absolutely have caused lasting pain, even if Jane and Robert believed they were acting according to their personal philosophy. But Games is more interested in preserving Lili as cosmically abandoned than in allowing her to confront a mixed reality in which she was hurt and cared for at the same time.
Her Lebanese heritage activates whenever the plot needs it to. She retains childhood French that she hasn’t spoken since the age of six, remembers highly detailed family conversations 17 years later, and can miraculously prepare a Middle Eastern dish she hasn’t eaten in just as long. Meanwhile, her white father is described simply as “American,” given almost no identity beyond his devotion to her Middle Eastern mother, and his family is absent from every discussion of possible relatives. Lili bears her mother’s maiden name to preserve that family line, while the novel treats her father’s as though it never existed. Additionally, the story avoids examining the privileges or identity complications of Lili’s own proximity to whiteness while she relentlessly interrogates Aleksandr’s.
The absence of a convincing inner life extends to the city as filtered through Lili. New York City feels like a Gen Z influencer’s Mapstr. There are bars, restaurants, and street names, but every location is a social or aesthetic credential. A convincing NYC comes alive through relationships to people and memories, like a bartender who knows Lili’s favorite cocktail, or a place that alters how she thinks of a specific neighborhood. Instead, Volkova offers the city up like a guidebook to downtown, wildly impersonal despite every venue being named. If you switch Buvette, Forsyth Street or Williamsburg with any other place in any other city, next to nothing about the characters or the story would change.
Like Lili, Aleksandr is also constructed from a long list of prestige traits: billionaire financier, Russian Oxford grad, and reader of serious literature. His record collection consists of Buckley, Vysotsky, and Gilberto. Rembrandt and Basquiat artwork hang in his guest bedrooms. Most importantly, he is a sexual god wearing a half-buttoned Charvet. He’s too busy for television, but found the time to sleep with 300-400 women and men in the 1990s. These logistics are more interesting than the romance itself. Michael functions as Aleksandr’s corporate henchman, appearing to “restore order” and treat Lili like both a plague and a threat to Aleksandr’s success. When the relationship needs emotional reinforcement, Michael becomes the hagiographer who supplies Aleksandr’s tragic childhood history and a glowing testimony to his character (“That boy—this man—saved his life, and mine.”). Like Lili’s friends, Michael plays the role of narrative infrastructure.
Both Lili and Aleksandr adopt new qualities or have things revealed exactly when the plot requires it. Lili is interested in astrology and crystals, but only to point out flaws in birth charts and energy. She becomes a habitual runner only when a scene on page 359 needs her to go out and clear her mind. Aleksandr’s environmental conscience is revealed through work emails printed in enormous font and conveniently left where Lili can see phrases about fossil-fuel divestment from across the room. He gets a facial scar that Lili somehow never notices until Chapter 7, and it’s packaged with a cute puppy backstory. It’s all by design, showing up right when Volkova needs Lili to fall harder for him.
The intellectual dialogue is positioned as one of Games’s biggest selling points but was, for me, a considerable weakness. Lili and Aleksandr speak at length about free markets, neoliberalism, democratic socialism, and the list goes on. The conversations are dense with names, theories, terminology, definitions, and buzzwords. It sounds intelligent until you realize all they’re doing is paraphrasing things already said by the greats:
“You agree with Gramsci and Foucault?”
“Without Luther’s vocational calling…”
“How Hobbesian.”
They cite Marx, Fromm, Koestler and whoever else appears on a graduate-level reading list. The dialogue reads like it required a bibliography to construct rather than arising naturally from two minds. Lili and Aleksandr are incredibly knowledgeable, but intelligence requires curiosity, interpretation, creation. They generate little that is new when they talk, and the conversations all follow an exhausting cadence, the same positions, and the same insults about capitalist pigs for pages on end.
The farm, Lili’s supposed true passion, is the agricultural version of many previously presented gripes. For roughly half the book “the farm” is a vague recurring noun. Only later do we learn Lili’s been involved with it since undergrad and is just great at everything she does there. When the story finally has her engage with the work, we get a list of vegetable varieties and even more people declaring that Lili has already raised every smart point they might have made. Despite missing several shifts, Lili is told she is uniquely capable of helping the farm’s organization grow domestically. As usual, her brilliance is certified by a gold sticker. We’re expected to believe Lili loves the farm without it ever having been presented as such.
This also paints a strange portrait of someone invested in fresh food systems. Lili eats out every meal, shops at Citarella, lectures about food deserts, and has no real relationship to the ethics she loudly professes unless the current conversation needs her to rip on someone (usually Aleksandr). She’s supposed to be financially insecure and uncomfortable benefiting from wealth, yet all her friends are rich and she recognizes every expensive item in sight, be it fashion labels or interior designers. She eats and drinks throughout New York City as though budgeting were theoretical, lives in gentrified Williamsburg on a TA’s salary, accepts borrowed luxury garments and trips, and enjoys the comforts wealth provides while condemning the people who provide them.
Then there’s the matter of the sex, which I can only describe as unenjoyable and unerotic. Having your clothes ripped off might seem titillating at first, but every scene follows a recycled Skinemax script. An argument leads to hair pulling, to penetration, to choking, and sometimes a bath. Lili and Aleksandr’s sexual vocabulary consists largely of “right there,” “harder,” “Jesus,” and variations on “take it.” Volkova spends absolutely no time building genuine desire, curiosity, teasing or discovery between the couple. The book’s idea of foreplay is hostility followed by Aleksandr demanding Lili get on the bed. We are asked to treat explicitness as intimacy and Lili’s tears as emotional closeness.
More seriously, the sexual boundaries are alarming. Aleksandr initiates sexual contact while Lili is asleep and hungover. He chokes her without first establishing consent, repeatedly leaves bruises around her neck, and her consciousness slips on more than one occasion. Only after hundreds of pages and several ejaculations does Aleksandr ask if they need to use a condom. This is the same man who coldly said “Is that a problem?” when revealing his body count was nearly 400 in a single decade. The same man who provided no recent STI test to prove he’s clean.
My dislike for the book sharpened in Chapter 6, when a violent sexual encounter transforms the relationship and the story’s emotional temperature abruptly. Suddenly, Aleksandr is tender. Suddenly, Lili wants to learn everything about him despite spending the first half of the book arguing “it’s just sex.” Lili romanticizes the encounter, attributing it to her rebirth and newfound mental clarity. Breath becomes a frequently repeated symbol of her resurrection. Later, in a Parisian church, Lili converts Aleksandr’s ability to asphyxiate her “correctly” into a form of discipline and spiritual purification. Physical pain becomes her faith. Suffocation becomes her penance.
Eventually, Lili exchanges roughly three words with a man at a bar before asking him to leave with her. He resembles a younger, more age-appropriate Aleksandr, which is apparently reason enough to cheat. She spends the entire encounter cringing and comparing him to Aleksandr, yet goes through with it anyway. That was the moment I knew Games had nothing redeeming left to offer. The narrative immediately positions Lili as someone in need of saving, and her friends gather around her like a broken bird. Lili sobs into a mug of tea while they pack her bags and whisk her away to Paris and the South of France so that she can recover from hurting someone else. This is framed as another breakthrough in which Lili finally lacks the strength to refuse the care people want to give her. And only at this point does the story remember that Lili has a bank account, which she nearly empties to pay for the first-class ticket. If only she hadn’t missed all those shifts at the farm.
From this point, the story could no longer hide behind rapid-fire debates and performatively transgressive sex. It depends entirely on Lili’s interiority, but it never offered up a truly plausible reason for her to destroy the relationship in the first place. Volkova supplies justification for cheating only after the act, and even that evolves as the story progresses. Initially, it is the fear Aleksandr would do it first, despite him establishing early on that cheating was a dealbreaker. Then it's the concern he wouldn’t make space for her in his life even though he has done so for much of the book. Lastly comes the worry that, after 1.5 months of dating, he might not marry Lili in the future.
Her grief and guilt over the breakup are expressed through melodrama. Cigarettes and mirrors, more breathing and suffocation, the inability to look at any man with dark brown hair. Lili runs through the streets of Paris sobbing in the rain, and almost kisses a woman just so she can feel someone’s touch again. The volume of theatrics rises but the psyche never deepens. The climax lifts the curtain on how weak Lili’s interiority has been throughout the entire book. France is not where she meaningfully confronts her actions, but where the novel proves it never built the emotional architecture necessary either to explain why Lili did it or to let us see her grow from it.
Only in France does Amina finally tell Lili that she has a victim mentality, that she keeps her life too private, and that she cannot continue destroying herself. It’s exactly the confrontation the story deserves earlier, but it arrives only when the plot needs a friendship rupture. However, it quickly softens into cuddling, reassurance, and another promise from Lili that she will be more open. The novel continually announces transformation and then reverses it within pages. Lili learns pain ends, then decides pain never ends. She accepts friendship, then pushes everyone away. She lets Aleksandr go, then bawls at the airport that she cannot. She is healed, breathing, free, happy, devastated, numb, and resurrected in rapid rotation. Her development expires at the end of each scene, along with my patience for these games.
What ultimately sinks the book isn’t just that the ending is mostly predictable and poorly resolved, but that it is genuinely uncomfortable to read. Lili arrives intending to apologize, and Aleksandr responds with an even more extreme display of humiliation and aggression, which the novel again frames as transformative and healing. Rather than interrogating the relationship at the last possible moment, the ending doubles down on its ugliest dynamics and mistakes escalation for payoff. The ending is a total market collapse, leaving the reader holding a profoundly toxic asset.
Perhaps that is Volkova’s true genius after all. Games: A Love Story may be the most convincing argument against neoliberalism we’ll ever encounter. The reader supplies the labor, the novel extracts the time, Lili and Aleksandr’s debates are the means of production, the sex scenes are unpaid overtime, and Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward describes the working conditions.
July 18, 2026
0 stars
For people who loved Fifty Shades of Gray, but found themselves wishing for some pseudo-intellectual conversations about economic theory in between the steamy scenes.
Games is nothing more than your typical bland “dark romance,” filled with sex scenes that somehow manage to be both incredibly boring and horrifically abusive. But the main characters are also insufferably pretentious “intellectuals” who spend pages spouting economic theory at each other. Like their sex, their conversations are banal and excruciating to sit through. Finally, the book never meaningfully engages with themes of power, class, or capitalism—but it sure spends countless pages pretending to!
I shouldn’t have forced myself to finish this. Every part of it was insufferable and toxic.
Read
January 7, 2026The book that changed my life
July 16, 2026
Games is ambitious and I think that should be embraced. It just reads like a billionaire romance, and that’s not my bag. There were parts I really liked: the plot was surprising, refreshing even. I love when a character truly, severely messes up and has to come back from it. The build and release of tension through conversation, desire, and tenderness. Some evocative, well-written prose. I listened to a clip of the audiobook and liked the narrator.
I imagine it was a difficult edit. Games is purposefully dense. First, the debates and the sex. Playing with opposition, repetition, and revision for the sake of developing intimacy. To do that in an accessible way requires a lot of academic explanation. Another reviewer called its function an exercise in Hegelian dialectics, and that’s exactly what I was thinking. Also made me remember how common it was to see flirtation during dialogue assignments in philosophy classes. A consequence of so much detail is an appearance of self-consciousness, but it reinforces Lili’s immaturity. The device works.
Then, there are a lot of vignette-ish descriptions of Lili's upbringing, her emotional turmoil, her travels, Aleksandr's apartment. Often repetitive, again, or just very long. Her overlapping ideas (breath/choking/panic/water, art/fame/brands/fashion, submission/control/violence, obviously religion/economic theory) get a lot of specificity, but they combine and blur. To cut words for the sake of narrative focus? In doing so, risk reducing Lili to the stereotype of a Marxist-vegan-tarot-grad-student that she facetiously describes to Aleksandr? Maybe a matter of taste, but publisher investment in editing can lack in books derived from fanfic and it’s convenient, if lazy, for me to assume that might have happened.
The romantic element that’s missing, or that I missed, is true transformation for Aleksandr. (Games is inevitably going to be classified as or compared to genre romance. It has the major attributes.) Strikes me as odd that historicals with wealthy men and less-so women often have some degree of social or emotional death for the MMC, while contemporary billionaire and mafia romances do not. I’m thinking of The Duke especially, also A Gentleman Undone, The Ruin of Evangeline Jones, Flowers from the Storm. Sunshine and Shadow is the only contemporary I can think of that achieves a full compromise, on both sides, to bridge a similar dynamic. Giving up more than pride, more than pessimism, in the pursuit of love and a meaningful life? What’s more romantic, more optimistic than that?
Regardless, Games is not interested in making Aleksandr sacrifice anything material for the sake of the relationship. But it is committed to the emotional romance, so we weren’t going get a zero-sum ending. For them to be together, two options remained: one side wins, or they’ll meet in the middle, politically and emotionally. So, Aleksandr wins. He gets to be obscenely wealthy and have Lili; Lili learns to be vulnerable, and she gets Aleksander and his obscene wealth. Emotional conflicts are resolved but the ethical and moral dilemmas are accepted. It’s conducive to Lili’s fantasy of safety. Reconciled to bisexual neoliberalism, for better or worse.
We’re left with the suggestion Aleksandr’s politics might evolve. His newfound optimism will negotiate with her class traitor guilt. I find that to be a romantic, good-faith take on a billionaire. Which isn’t to say that the only alternative is to romanticize socialism, I don’t need it to align with my politics or Lili’s. My point is that Aleksandr needed to be knocked down a few more pegs, even if he kept his money. Like Nick’s family turmoil, in Crazy Rich Asians. Also game theory, I realize. And I haven't even gotten into the national identity stuff.
Billionaire romances are still everywhere right now, and complicating them is a good thing. My not-youthful optimism chooses to believe Aleksandr is on his way to Melinda Gates-ing himself out of any future Davos invites, while Lili sticks to her values and gives EMDR a try.
I imagine it was a difficult edit. Games is purposefully dense. First, the debates and the sex. Playing with opposition, repetition, and revision for the sake of developing intimacy. To do that in an accessible way requires a lot of academic explanation. Another reviewer called its function an exercise in Hegelian dialectics, and that’s exactly what I was thinking. Also made me remember how common it was to see flirtation during dialogue assignments in philosophy classes. A consequence of so much detail is an appearance of self-consciousness, but it reinforces Lili’s immaturity. The device works.
Then, there are a lot of vignette-ish descriptions of Lili's upbringing, her emotional turmoil, her travels, Aleksandr's apartment. Often repetitive, again, or just very long. Her overlapping ideas (breath/choking/panic/water, art/fame/brands/fashion, submission/control/violence, obviously religion/economic theory) get a lot of specificity, but they combine and blur. To cut words for the sake of narrative focus? In doing so, risk reducing Lili to the stereotype of a Marxist-vegan-tarot-grad-student that she facetiously describes to Aleksandr? Maybe a matter of taste, but publisher investment in editing can lack in books derived from fanfic and it’s convenient, if lazy, for me to assume that might have happened.
The romantic element that’s missing, or that I missed, is true transformation for Aleksandr. (Games is inevitably going to be classified as or compared to genre romance. It has the major attributes.) Strikes me as odd that historicals with wealthy men and less-so women often have some degree of social or emotional death for the MMC, while contemporary billionaire and mafia romances do not. I’m thinking of The Duke especially, also A Gentleman Undone, The Ruin of Evangeline Jones, Flowers from the Storm. Sunshine and Shadow is the only contemporary I can think of that achieves a full compromise, on both sides, to bridge a similar dynamic. Giving up more than pride, more than pessimism, in the pursuit of love and a meaningful life? What’s more romantic, more optimistic than that?
Regardless, Games is not interested in making Aleksandr sacrifice anything material for the sake of the relationship. But it is committed to the emotional romance, so we weren’t going get a zero-sum ending. For them to be together, two options remained: one side wins, or they’ll meet in the middle, politically and emotionally. So, Aleksandr wins. He gets to be obscenely wealthy and have Lili; Lili learns to be vulnerable, and she gets Aleksander and his obscene wealth. Emotional conflicts are resolved but the ethical and moral dilemmas are accepted. It’s conducive to Lili’s fantasy of safety. Reconciled to bisexual neoliberalism, for better or worse.
We’re left with the suggestion Aleksandr’s politics might evolve. His newfound optimism will negotiate with her class traitor guilt. I find that to be a romantic, good-faith take on a billionaire. Which isn’t to say that the only alternative is to romanticize socialism, I don’t need it to align with my politics or Lili’s. My point is that Aleksandr needed to be knocked down a few more pegs, even if he kept his money. Like Nick’s family turmoil, in Crazy Rich Asians. Also game theory, I realize. And I haven't even gotten into the national identity stuff.
Billionaire romances are still everywhere right now, and complicating them is a good thing. My not-youthful optimism chooses to believe Aleksandr is on his way to Melinda Gates-ing himself out of any future Davos invites, while Lili sticks to her values and gives EMDR a try.
July 14, 2026
"Somewhere in this city, there is a girl, in a museum, and a man beside her."
So it's been days since I've finished this book and I still feel physically unwell when I think about Lili and Aleksandr for too long. I know this book wont be everyone's cup of tea, their relationship is messy, a bit toxic, self destructive (mostly one sided), and yes there is a huge age gap. But the amount of space this book as taken up in my brain alone deserves a proper review so I'll do my best to try to sort through my thoughts to write a coherent review.
I want to start this off by saying that I think you shouldn't go into this thinking it's a typical romance novel (obviously) but very much more a literary fiction x romance crossover. The writing was phenomenal in here (with some minor pacing issues), and I had no idea that there would be discussions over identity and belonging in this story. This book was also very much a character study on Lili and trying to understand all the chaos and destructiveness in her mind, but also how much she really craves to be loved and safe. With that being said, I do think we could have dived slightly deeper into Aleksander's character and try to understand him more, but that was only something I noticed later and did not bother me while I was reading this story.
Reading this book brought so many emotions out of me and it was like a train wreck you couldn't help but watch. I adored Aleksandr and Lili's interactions, I wont lie, some of their arguments were hard for me to follow, but I loved watching two hot smart people banter back and forth, and it was clear how much they enjoyed picking each other's brains. While there was moments that warmed my heart, and had my jaw drop from their spice scenes, there was a constant ache I felt in my chest by a certain part in this story that I still feel now as I write this.
It's like rooting for two people that could possibly be better apart from each other, but they choose each other, regardless of how hard it is, or how hard their brain gets in the way of their happiness. This book was incredibly raw and real, and dived into how does one's trauma shape a person and their decisions. I will be reading anything this author decides to write in the future, and I am so glad I decided to pick this one up, even if I am suffering with constant thoughts of Lili and Aleksander 😂
side note: the brain rot was so crazy that I did a deep dive and tried to find if there was any extra chapters submitted by the author anywhere, and did find out that there is an epilogue in the works?! (no pressure, but I need this like I need air)
_____________________________________________________
the fact that it's been an hour since I finished this book and I'm still staring at the ceiling thinking about them.
the ending? actually written very perfectly BUT I am still somehow dying for MORE or any more crumbs of them like is there a hidden epilogue somewhere because I NEED IT 😭
So it's been days since I've finished this book and I still feel physically unwell when I think about Lili and Aleksandr for too long. I know this book wont be everyone's cup of tea, their relationship is messy, a bit toxic, self destructive (mostly one sided), and yes there is a huge age gap. But the amount of space this book as taken up in my brain alone deserves a proper review so I'll do my best to try to sort through my thoughts to write a coherent review.
I want to start this off by saying that I think you shouldn't go into this thinking it's a typical romance novel (obviously) but very much more a literary fiction x romance crossover. The writing was phenomenal in here (with some minor pacing issues), and I had no idea that there would be discussions over identity and belonging in this story. This book was also very much a character study on Lili and trying to understand all the chaos and destructiveness in her mind, but also how much she really craves to be loved and safe. With that being said, I do think we could have dived slightly deeper into Aleksander's character and try to understand him more, but that was only something I noticed later and did not bother me while I was reading this story.
Reading this book brought so many emotions out of me and it was like a train wreck you couldn't help but watch. I adored Aleksandr and Lili's interactions, I wont lie, some of their arguments were hard for me to follow, but I loved watching two hot smart people banter back and forth, and it was clear how much they enjoyed picking each other's brains. While there was moments that warmed my heart, and had my jaw drop from their spice scenes, there was a constant ache I felt in my chest by a certain part in this story that I still feel now as I write this.
It's like rooting for two people that could possibly be better apart from each other, but they choose each other, regardless of how hard it is, or how hard their brain gets in the way of their happiness. This book was incredibly raw and real, and dived into how does one's trauma shape a person and their decisions. I will be reading anything this author decides to write in the future, and I am so glad I decided to pick this one up, even if I am suffering with constant thoughts of Lili and Aleksander 😂
side note: the brain rot was so crazy that I did a deep dive and tried to find if there was any extra chapters submitted by the author anywhere, and did find out that there is an epilogue in the works?! (no pressure, but I need this like I need air)
_____________________________________________________
the fact that it's been an hour since I finished this book and I'm still staring at the ceiling thinking about them.
the ending? actually written very perfectly BUT I am still somehow dying for MORE or any more crumbs of them like is there a hidden epilogue somewhere because I NEED IT 😭
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
pre-read:
imagine my delighted surprise when upon receiving the arc i found out this started out as Darklina fanfiction
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➵ 4.5 ⭐️
HOW do I begin to process this 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Sincerely Anna, fuck you for what you put me through 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
This is one of those books that quietly and unexpectedly burrows under your skin.
Games A Love Story was intense and heartbreaking and sexy and smart and gutwrenching and it won't be for everyone, fuck may not be for a lot of people actually, especially after that plot twist, but I fell hard.
I don't even know where to start, the way this fucking hurt me by the end was soooo unexpected.
Our FMC Lili was so complicated and damaged but also smart, a survivor. She definitely had A lot of issues to work through—from her parents dying at a very young age and leaving her an orphan to not being able to feel secure enough in her environment and also flipping between not being good enough and being too much. Every time she got anxiety about the good things in her life not lasting, and the ground under her feet shifting, and just constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop—it was just beyond sad.
Her unexpected connection with Aleksandr was actually everything. At first glance, they couldn't be more different—he's older, rich, with a completely different world and economic view—their debates were so interesting and I could just read that for days, I swear this book made me twice as smart. But they were actually a lot alike under the surface—like 2 sides of the same coin.
I love how he was able to see through her bullshit most of the time, how having felt and experienced something similar he knew what she needed and managed to get through the walls she's built around herself keeping everyone away. Lili wasn't an easy person to deal with, neither was Aleksandr for that matter, but the way he just knew how to push her and handle her but also take care of her was so 🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻 I have no words because she literally needed that, someone like that, so badly.
As an immigrant myself and from that part of the world I found Aleksandr very relatable on many levels. Even though I didn't fully agree with either character's economic ideology, I definitely understood why each of them felt the way they did and I loved the way they challenged their views and beliefs especially Lili's.
Now, that plot twist towards the end absolutely broke my heart for so many reasons. Even though I'd been expecting Lili to self sabotage I didn't think it will happen the way it did and everything afterwards was just so fucking tragic.
I was literally crying for like 2 hours straight during one of the last chapters and I had no idea where the story was gonna go. I cannot explain how upset I was and how much anxiety the last 2 chapters gave me, like a train wreck I just couldn't look away from. I really appreciated the way Lili's friends were not only there for her but also honest with her and weren't afraid to criticize her. (my fav was N̶i̶k̶o̶l̶a̶i̶ Jamie, I love him so much 😭🤌🏻)
I honestly don't think I can write any kind of review that will do this book and the themes in it justice.
Games is about so much more than rough sex, subspace and economics (though you get a lot of that). It's a love letter to NYC; it's also about ambition and trauma, lineages of heartbreak and loss, the meaning of home and grief and the space we carve in other people and what we mean to them.
This is one of those books that leaves you aching by the end.
eternal gratitude to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc
all quotes are from an advance copy and may differ in the final publication
imagine my delighted surprise when upon receiving the arc i found out this started out as Darklina fanfiction
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➵ 4.5 ⭐️
HOW do I begin to process this 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Sincerely Anna, fuck you for what you put me through 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
This is one of those books that quietly and unexpectedly burrows under your skin.
Games A Love Story was intense and heartbreaking and sexy and smart and gutwrenching and it won't be for everyone, fuck may not be for a lot of people actually, especially after that plot twist, but I fell hard.
"She wants him deeper, until she can't think about anything but him. Erase me, is what she wants to say; keep taking until she's nothing."
I don't even know where to start, the way this fucking hurt me by the end was soooo unexpected.
Our FMC Lili was so complicated and damaged but also smart, a survivor. She definitely had A lot of issues to work through—from her parents dying at a very young age and leaving her an orphan to not being able to feel secure enough in her environment and also flipping between not being good enough and being too much. Every time she got anxiety about the good things in her life not lasting, and the ground under her feet shifting, and just constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop—it was just beyond sad.
"She got very good, very young, at presenting a polished surface and keeping any depths—darkness, want, need, the ugliness of aching to be cared for—hidden."
Her unexpected connection with Aleksandr was actually everything. At first glance, they couldn't be more different—he's older, rich, with a completely different world and economic view—their debates were so interesting and I could just read that for days, I swear this book made me twice as smart. But they were actually a lot alike under the surface—like 2 sides of the same coin.
"[. . .]would she have been better off if she'd never known it could feel like his? Like parts of her were made for him, like parts of him were made for her?"
I love how he was able to see through her bullshit most of the time, how having felt and experienced something similar he knew what she needed and managed to get through the walls she's built around herself keeping everyone away. Lili wasn't an easy person to deal with, neither was Aleksandr for that matter, but the way he just knew how to push her and handle her but also take care of her was so 🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻 I have no words because she literally needed that, someone like that, so badly.
"This isn't a trap, Lili."
It feels like one. The amount she wants to kiss him, the amount that she likes his hands on her.
As an immigrant myself and from that part of the world I found Aleksandr very relatable on many levels. Even though I didn't fully agree with either character's economic ideology, I definitely understood why each of them felt the way they did and I loved the way they challenged their views and beliefs especially Lili's.
". . .it's a limited world, if we only explored what compounded what we already believed. You need to test what you think, often. Our convictions and beliefs need to hold up against argument, otherwise, we're just grasping at blind faith."
Now, that plot twist towards the end absolutely broke my heart for so many reasons. Even though I'd been expecting Lili to self sabotage I didn't think it will happen the way it did and everything afterwards was just so fucking tragic.
"I want you so badly it makes me feel sick," she whispers, hoarse throat. "The not-having you, I mean—I feel sick with it."
I was literally crying for like 2 hours straight during one of the last chapters and I had no idea where the story was gonna go. I cannot explain how upset I was and how much anxiety the last 2 chapters gave me, like a train wreck I just couldn't look away from. I really appreciated the way Lili's friends were not only there for her but also honest with her and weren't afraid to criticize her. (my fav was N̶i̶k̶o̶l̶a̶i̶ Jamie, I love him so much 😭🤌🏻)
I honestly don't think I can write any kind of review that will do this book and the themes in it justice.
Games is about so much more than rough sex, subspace and economics (though you get a lot of that). It's a love letter to NYC; it's also about ambition and trauma, lineages of heartbreak and loss, the meaning of home and grief and the space we carve in other people and what we mean to them.
This is one of those books that leaves you aching by the end.
"The way he looks at her: It feels like a memory. Cold salt air, the scent of an orange."
eternal gratitude to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc
all quotes are from an advance copy and may differ in the final publication
March 24, 2026
While I'm pretty sure this book won't be everyone's cup of tea, it was definitely a hit for me. I believe I've read it at the exact right time in my life, and I feel like it found something in me that I didn't know existed.
Lili is such a complex character, with many flaws but also a character development we can notice through the chapters. She has convictions and stays strong-minded even in the face of what she criticizes, mostly today's system and those who benefits from it. Her aversion to capitalism, power imbalance and injustice was refreshing to read. However, being in her head and reading her thoughts, as rough, confusing and messy as they can be, was truly a lot. She is infuriating but through her grief, her struggles and her background, we have no choice but to love her and root for her. Her emotionally avoidant personality was clearly the result of walls built decades ago around her that seemed to be impossible to break in, even by the closest friends she's constantly surrounded with. And yet.
Aleksandr is the typical rich, powerful, two-decades-older-than-her business man. You'd never think they'd have a cordial conversation without tearing each other's head off, even less be with each other in any way. It was interesting to read about a character like him, who seemed more unbearable and self-centered than not, but that we can't help sympathize with. He's somehow more down to earth than we first would think, with understanding and patience that have to do with his childhood, his own struggles and, surely, his decades of life experience.
The details and depth of their endless conversations, more like intellectual debates and wrestling, was inspiring to read, made me realize how important it is to read books and learn from them. Lili and Aleksandr were so intense and I really appreciated the dynamic of them constantly challenging each other. Putting aside these moments, we find the incredibly raw intimate scenes, his bedroom the place where everything began and they keep learning the most about each other. It is this way they find themselves to be a complete match, Aleksandr trying to prove Lili she's more than she thinks she is and Lili just wanting to find an escape to an internal monologue full of unstoppable self-destructive thoughts, who she keeps hidden more often than not. But with him, she doesn't need to hide it and she doesn't need to form any words to say it either. Surprisingly, I teared up at many of these scenes. The author knows how to add psychological and immersive depth into them.
The main characters grow too, through the pages and chapters, which was needed. Don't get me wrong, I was here for the messiness of it all, but I could feel the ache of their miscommunication, as it often is, as well as the need for them to get a full view of the other's brain, even if they seemed to have a silent understanding. He learns to be more attentive and she learns to, at one point, open up. They go through loss, grief, guilt, hope and yearning that really makes you FEEL. There isn't a word that could describe the complexity of their relationship on its own.
On top of that, I must say I loved the writing from the get-go and was completely captivated by it. It was full of details, most times for pages, with carefulness to the characters emotions that made me want to always read more. I loved the precisions given to the major themes; art, politics, philosophy, economics, astrology. It never felt rushed to me, more like the contrary. I felt everything more deeply because of its pacing, slow because of the storyline and the prose. It is introspective, sexy, smart and totally meaningful for a twenty-three years old like Lili. There are so many quotes that stuck with me and that I resonated with. I'll be keeping her with Anna Maria Volkova's next projects for sure.
Lili is such a complex character, with many flaws but also a character development we can notice through the chapters. She has convictions and stays strong-minded even in the face of what she criticizes, mostly today's system and those who benefits from it. Her aversion to capitalism, power imbalance and injustice was refreshing to read. However, being in her head and reading her thoughts, as rough, confusing and messy as they can be, was truly a lot. She is infuriating but through her grief, her struggles and her background, we have no choice but to love her and root for her. Her emotionally avoidant personality was clearly the result of walls built decades ago around her that seemed to be impossible to break in, even by the closest friends she's constantly surrounded with. And yet.
Aleksandr is the typical rich, powerful, two-decades-older-than-her business man. You'd never think they'd have a cordial conversation without tearing each other's head off, even less be with each other in any way. It was interesting to read about a character like him, who seemed more unbearable and self-centered than not, but that we can't help sympathize with. He's somehow more down to earth than we first would think, with understanding and patience that have to do with his childhood, his own struggles and, surely, his decades of life experience.
The details and depth of their endless conversations, more like intellectual debates and wrestling, was inspiring to read, made me realize how important it is to read books and learn from them. Lili and Aleksandr were so intense and I really appreciated the dynamic of them constantly challenging each other. Putting aside these moments, we find the incredibly raw intimate scenes, his bedroom the place where everything began and they keep learning the most about each other. It is this way they find themselves to be a complete match, Aleksandr trying to prove Lili she's more than she thinks she is and Lili just wanting to find an escape to an internal monologue full of unstoppable self-destructive thoughts, who she keeps hidden more often than not. But with him, she doesn't need to hide it and she doesn't need to form any words to say it either. Surprisingly, I teared up at many of these scenes. The author knows how to add psychological and immersive depth into them.
The main characters grow too, through the pages and chapters, which was needed. Don't get me wrong, I was here for the messiness of it all, but I could feel the ache of their miscommunication, as it often is, as well as the need for them to get a full view of the other's brain, even if they seemed to have a silent understanding. He learns to be more attentive and she learns to, at one point, open up. They go through loss, grief, guilt, hope and yearning that really makes you FEEL. There isn't a word that could describe the complexity of their relationship on its own.
On top of that, I must say I loved the writing from the get-go and was completely captivated by it. It was full of details, most times for pages, with carefulness to the characters emotions that made me want to always read more. I loved the precisions given to the major themes; art, politics, philosophy, economics, astrology. It never felt rushed to me, more like the contrary. I felt everything more deeply because of its pacing, slow because of the storyline and the prose. It is introspective, sexy, smart and totally meaningful for a twenty-three years old like Lili. There are so many quotes that stuck with me and that I resonated with. I'll be keeping her with Anna Maria Volkova's next projects for sure.
July 16, 2026
I picked up Games: A Love Story originally through NetGalley as an ARC. But I was unable to get into it, Lili’s character not someone I could relate to. But reviews were coming in with how great a love story this is, so I picked my Kindle up and tried to read it again. I was only able to make it 25% total between the two tries. I could see where the story was going to be angsty like I enjoy, Lili has some deep seated pain she hasn’t worked through from childhood and it leaks into her relationships. I love age gap too so I was totally on board with the 20 year difference from Alek. But their interactions throughout the 25% were only arguing politics, she a progressive and he a conservative, and hard, painful sex she uses to feel something other than apathy. The economic politic banter was too much, and not at all the kind of foreplay talk I enjoy. Not because I felt like I had to pick a side, hers or his, but because you needed to take a class just to understand some of the terminology threw at you. Spend my time looking up the difference between Marxism and Communism…no thanks. Plus, Lili was just insufferable. She is one of those people who preach how wrong other people are for living their lives the way they do. I just couldn’t with her. Thanks NetGalley though for this ARC, my opinions, as always are my own, so take them with a grain of salt.
July 6, 2026
I fear it is with such certainty that I deem this the worst book I have ever read. I am so annoyed that I don’t believe in DNFing books because I would have RELISHED in DNFing this monstrosity. I am remiss to find even a single thing I enjoyed about it. Not only was the plot terrible, leaving multiple important storylines open, numerous questions unanswered, etc. (You’re seriously going to force me through chapters and chapters about Lili’s huckleberry-ass farm job, and descriptions of her plans to continue said work after graduation, just to have her run away to Europe the week she is supposed to begin her first full-time job AND NOT EVEN TELL US IF SHE MAINTAINED THIS CURATED JOB OFFER UPON HER RETURN FROM HER SAD GIRL EURO SUMMER???), but I also vehemently despised the writing style from page one. Hasn’t every English teacher since the dawn of time given the same tired critique—“show us, don’t tell us”? This book was twice the length it should have been because the author spent pages upon pages giving long-winded horribly bland descriptions of every single scene in the form of horribly tangential run-on sentences. And beyond just the abysmal writing style, the dialogue was reproachful; it was perhaps the single most pretentious collection of dialogue I have ever had the displeasure of reading through. Economic jargon-heavy word vomit made up at least 25% of this novel. You can’t use the word BESPOKE multiple times and expect me not to take issue, and your audience should not need to look up a majority of the phrases you included in fmc/mmc dialogue whose sole purpose is to build rapport between two love interests. And, I must of course comment on the ATROCIOUS smut. You absolutely cannot market this book as Normal People meets Fifty Shades just to churn out the most cringe-worthy, uncomfortable smut I have ever encountered. Lili and Alexsander are, by and large, the most irritatingly immature, unlikable main characters. This entire 400 page mistake could maybe, possibly, be enjoyed by sympathizers of Season 4 runaway-fake alias-Chuck Bass and also perhaps those whose frontal lobes have not yet been fully developed. I sincerely hope there aren’t people out there as functionally incompetent as Lili. 0/5 stars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Did Not Finish
July 18, 2026DNF 55%
Might come back to this but this type of romance isnt for me tbh .
And as i said am not an econ girlie so i lowkey skimed half the conversations🙂
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𓏲 ๋࣭ ࣪ Pre-Read:
This seems pretty good and I don't really know what to read rn so yeah , hopefully its good 🙏
Might come back to this but this type of romance isnt for me tbh .
And as i said am not an econ girlie so i lowkey skimed half the conversations🙂
---
𓏲 ๋࣭ ࣪ Pre-Read:
This seems pretty good and I don't really know what to read rn so yeah , hopefully its good 🙏
July 8, 2026
I absolutely loved how Games handles discussions about politics, art, careers, beliefs, and morality. The conversations are long, layered, and full of genuine back and forth, but they never felt boring. You can tell how much research Anna did because every debate feels informed, nuanced, and believable.
Watching Lili and Aleksandr clash over their different perspectives was fascinating. Neither of them is always right, and that’s exactly what made their relationship work for me. They challenged each other in ways that felt authentic, and I loved seeing how those conversations shaped their connection.
The middle section felt a little too long at times, but honestly… I would’ve happily read another 200 pages. I devoured this in one afternoon and never wanted to put it down.
Now, let’s talk about Aleksandr Petrov.
The man that you are.
I genuinely think he was written specifically for me. Tall gringo? Looks like bad news? Hilarious? Scary smart? Yeah… that’s exactly my type.
I also loved the way the central conflict was handled. Even though it all stemmed from a misunderstanding, the emotional aftermath felt incredibly real. There was hurt, messiness, and difficult conversations, but what I appreciated most was that Lili actually took the time to reflect, hold herself accountable, and slowly open herself up to him again instead of rushing toward a perfect resolution. It made the ending feel so much more earned.
And the fact that this is Anna’s debut novel? Incredible. I don’t know her personally, but I’m so proud of her. She’s clearly brilliant, and I have a soft spot for brilliant people.
I’m so happy my gut feeling about this book was right. I desperately needed a new favorite, and this one absolutely became one. 💛
Watching Lili and Aleksandr clash over their different perspectives was fascinating. Neither of them is always right, and that’s exactly what made their relationship work for me. They challenged each other in ways that felt authentic, and I loved seeing how those conversations shaped their connection.
The middle section felt a little too long at times, but honestly… I would’ve happily read another 200 pages. I devoured this in one afternoon and never wanted to put it down.
Now, let’s talk about Aleksandr Petrov.
The man that you are.
I genuinely think he was written specifically for me. Tall gringo? Looks like bad news? Hilarious? Scary smart? Yeah… that’s exactly my type.
I also loved the way the central conflict was handled. Even though it all stemmed from a misunderstanding, the emotional aftermath felt incredibly real. There was hurt, messiness, and difficult conversations, but what I appreciated most was that Lili actually took the time to reflect, hold herself accountable, and slowly open herself up to him again instead of rushing toward a perfect resolution. It made the ending feel so much more earned.
And the fact that this is Anna’s debut novel? Incredible. I don’t know her personally, but I’m so proud of her. She’s clearly brilliant, and I have a soft spot for brilliant people.
I’m so happy my gut feeling about this book was right. I desperately needed a new favorite, and this one absolutely became one. 💛
July 10, 2026
my wholesome smutty babies who balanced everything perfectly <3 <3
a lebanese self sabotaging baddie ? perfect!!!
i loved everything about this . from the never ending smart banter about politics and economy to how buzzy and hot they were and even to how despite how spicy they were , the soft and wholesome moments that had me smiling like a lunatic!!!!! i thought this would be way more toxic but it was actually really adorable. i did think the conflict dragged on for sooooo long ( like 35% of the book ) but i enjoyed it too much to not give it a five star. i can see how (given the talks and dynamics here ) people might not like it but i enjoyed that part a lot !!! two smart people in a relationship: HOT
a lebanese self sabotaging baddie ? perfect!!!
i loved everything about this . from the never ending smart banter about politics and economy to how buzzy and hot they were and even to how despite how spicy they were , the soft and wholesome moments that had me smiling like a lunatic!!!!! i thought this would be way more toxic but it was actually really adorable. i did think the conflict dragged on for sooooo long ( like 35% of the book ) but i enjoyed it too much to not give it a five star. i can see how (given the talks and dynamics here ) people might not like it but i enjoyed that part a lot !!! two smart people in a relationship: HOT
July 11, 2026
1.50 stars
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