Hello, bookworms!
Happy Monday and happy last week of March. This week is going to be crazy busy for me, so I am trying to write and schedule all the articles from now up until the first week of April, pray for me. It's also Artistic Gymnastics Junior Worlds and Jesolo Cup week, so I'll have a lot of content to get caught up with once I am done working at a comics book fair, lol.
All that aside, today I am here to review Play the Game by Charlene Allen, a contemporary mystery which was kindly sent to me by Harper360YA earlier this year in February.
Without any further ado, let's get this review started!
Disclaimer
I received a physical proof of this book from the publisher (which is now available in its final and corrected form) in exchange for an honest review; this does not affect my rating nor my opinions in any way. Everything you'll find in this review is what I actually think and it wasn't influenced by anyone. Thank you so much to the publisher for the chance to read and review this book.
About the book
Title: Play the Game
Author: Charlene Allen
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication date: January 31, 2023
Pages: 320
Plot, as stated on Goodreads
From debut author Charlene Allen comes a captivating YA contemporary mystery and coming-of-age story, celebrating the power of friendship, first love, and exploring the criminal justice system from the lens of restorative justice. Perfect for fans of Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, and Maureen Johnson. In the game of life, sometimes other people hold all the controls. Or so it seems to VZ. Four months have passed since his best friend Ed was killed by a white man in a Brooklyn parking lot. When Singer, the man who killed Ed, is found dead in the same spot where Ed was murdered, all signs point to Jack, VZ's other best friend, as the prime suspect. VZ's determined to complete the video game Ed never finished and figure out who actually killed Singer. With help from Diamond, the girl he's crushing on at work, VZ falls into Ed's quirky gameiverse. As the police close in on Jack, the game starts to uncover details that could lead to the truth about the murder. Can VZ honor Ed and help Jack before it's too late?
My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Review
I am going to start a petition to ban marketing from making comparisons with other books, because I am tired of being tricked into reading something that it's not what its description says. Had I started this book not having read "Perfect for fans of Maureen Johnson", I think I would have given it a bit of a higher rating, because I would have not been expecting a true murder mystery. I mean, Maureen Johnson writes traditional mysteries, not contemporary book featuring a murder and a vague mystery about who committed it.
The main issue for me was exactly that there was not enough mystery and not enough investigation. It was much more a coming of age story about racism, friendships and dealing with grief than anything else. Which would have been fine, if it were what I was looking for or even just expecting. Unfortunately, marketing has ruined this for me…
In general, I found the writing to be a bit too amateurish for my taste, making it really hard for me to like the characters. They had a lot of potential, especially the secondary ones, but the writing style was really too surface level, in my opinion, and the potential has been lost.
Moreover, the plot was not engaging, because the author did try to put a mystery and some romance into what could have been a great contemporary novel about friendship, grief and racism; I firmly believe that not all stories have to have a romance subplot to work, and this is a clear example of the fact. The couple had no chemistry and the love triangle was only useful because I can use this book for the Popsugar Challenge prompt featuring one.
The mystery was extremely basic, and there was not a real investigation to speak of. The main character played his dead friend's videogame, and while he played it he made absurd connections between what was happening in game and what was happening in real life (sometimes while high). I wish I was kidding, but I swear that's true. Read to believe.
I have given this book 2 stars and not just 1, because as I said, this would have been a great hard-hitting coming of age novel: the discourse about dealing with grief, especially when racism is concerned, was interesting and I liked how the author showed different ways people can react to the same event, both the younger ones and the adults (or adult, here).
Overall, if you go into this knowing it's going to be a contemporary and not a mystery, I do believe you might like it more than I did. I think especially if this is your first time approaching this kind of story, you can totally find it more original and entertaining than I did. The comparisons with Tiffany D. Jackson and Nic Stone are way more accurate than the one with Maureen Johnson, and I have no idea why they did not stick to that. I would have given this book at least a three stars rating, were it not being sold wrongly. Listen and learn, dear publishers, listen and learn, especially when you send out ARCs to early readers.
That is going to be all for today, I will talk to you soon with my review of the TV show adaptation of Daisy Jones & The Six. If you follow me on Twitter, you may already know what I am thinking of it (I haven't finished it yet), but if you don't I'll keep the surprise.
As promised, though, I am going to reveal my tattoo: I got five Heartstopper leaves on my left wrist. I am very happy with the result and I will proudly show it off forever!
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