I wanted to like this book. Really.
I waited almost all the way up until the end to give this book a chance.
Unfortunately, it just couldn't deliver.
Game of Fear submerges you in a world of wealth that acts as a shiny veneer for nefarious deeds. Our heroine, Abbie Cooper, is a good girl. No seriously. She is. We know this by the title of Part 1 - "The Good Girl." We know this because her nemesis, mean girl Sydney, constantly lobs this label at her as an insult. From the very start, we're led to believe that Abbie is a good girl because she's never dated and doesn't really do parties.
Abbie's a good girl, which makes it all the more shocking when we learn she's made one glaring mistake in her past that's now come back to haunt her and mess with her chances of attending an Ivy League school.
Insert faceless villain: The Avenger. With untraceable threats and mockery, The Avenger blackmails Abbie with the warning that if she doesn't listen, her secrets will be exposed to all.
Here's what Game of Fear does well:
Friendship: I enjoyed the tight friendship between Abbie and her two best friends, particularly because they were a departure from stories that feature only white characters. Pretty early on, we learn that the group is called the "Rainbow Posse because of our diverse ethnic backgrounds" which may be laying it on a bit thick, but I appreciate it still. Unfortunately, these girls' identities don't always seem to be a part of them. Besides a few brief mentions sprinkled throughout the book, their ethnic backgrounds don't play a meaningful role in their lives, it seems. Overall, these girls were loyal, and Frances and Callie had their own peripheral arcs so that they weren't just accessories to Abbie's problems. I liked them a lot and wish they had even more complexity to draw them out as real characters.
Multi-Tasking: The Avenger's schemes don't occupy full-time space in Abbie's head. As an almost-graduate entering her first relationship, Abbie deals with complex problems in addition to the main problem that drives the plot. Kabongo did a good job sharing the stage with other issues that would pop up in a teenager's life.
Here's what I did not enjoy:
Pacing: Ah, the further into the story I went, the more I got irked as chapters would just cut off in the middle of a conversation. Rather than establishing a dramatic tone that adequately closed one section to lead into the next, the effect was just jarring. Had this book gone through another round of edits, it might've read a bit smoother so transitions wouldn't have been so bumpy. This became a severe problem with the big reveal at the end. All this build-up, and then it's just--
Editing: Speaking of another round of edits...I was still catching typos as I read. While this isn't the author's fault, it does disrupt the ability to be submerged in their work. I was disappointed to find these in a published novel.
Mental Health: Okay, this one is pretty heavy, and I won't go too in-depth, but more than one character carries trauma with them, and I was grossly disappointed at how Kabongo chose to handle it with one particular character. I just - I'm so tired of seeing characters' pain serve the plot. Can we not anymore? Like, can we all decide to stop using trauma as a salacious tidbit of discovery?
Abbie's Inner Monologue: At times, Abbie's thoughts just baffled me. Here are a few examples:
1. "I giggle like the teenage girl that I am. He does things to me."
2. "That's it. After school, I'm heading to the mall to purchase some kind of gag or mouth restraint thingy."
I can't tell if this is bad or if I'm just truly aging out of this demographic, but these made me wince.
The Wealth: Oh the wealth. When I was younger, I may have enjoyed the opportunity to open the pages of a book and pretend, if just for a couple of hours, I was rich. But such is not the case anymore. Some inner part of me just switched off when the characters casually talked about drumming up $50,000 for something (that could pay off my student loans almost twice over). Like I said, this could just be the side effects of aging and seeing the world through a realistic lens but it could also be a developing allergy to the excess and frivolity of wealth. Hmm.
Maybe I sound harsh and judgmental. Maybe downright irrelevant. It's just that I had a hard time imagining teens connecting with Abbie at a realistic level. Sure, we all make mistakes and many students in the U.S. undergo the stressful process of college applications. But how many of us visit our boyfriend's families on a private jet, attend a private school that significantly increases our chances of getting into the Ivy Leagues, and have a famous chef for a mom so we can have elaborate spreads of food when friends come over for the holidays?
While a fun ride at times, this book required me to suspend too much of my disbelief.