All The Wicked Games by Lauren North
Published by Penguin on 01/09/22
Genres: Thriller
Pages: 368
Format: ARC
Source: Random Things Tours
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Are you ready to play?

Best friends Cleo and Rachel spend their evenings pretending to be people they're not, inventing elaborate stories to escape the monotony of their real lives. It's all harmless fun - until they play the game on the wrong person...

It's your move now.

Five years later, Cleo is still struggling to come to terms with the night that destroyed her friendship with Rachel and almost cost them their lives. And then she receives a text: Rachel is missing. Have you seen her?

There's only one person to blame.

Wracked with guilt for failing Rachel the last time they were in danger, Cleo races to find her friend. But could the past be repeating itself? Only this time, they're caught up in a far darker game.

The rules don't matter when the goal is revenge.

I received this book for free from Random Things Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Ah, you know me, I love a good dual timeline thriller!

The book starts with Cleo who is on leave from her job on a cruise ship, receiving news that her friend Rachel has disappeared. Rachel was her best friend, but they’ve not been in touch for years. We then cut back to 5 years ago when Cleo and Rachel shared a flat and played an online “game” together – chatting to others and making up elaborate stories. They thought it was harmless fun. Until it wasn’t. Cleo learns that the games have started up again, and heads to London to investigate.

This has such a sinister feel to it and you know that something bad is going to happen, North spends some time building up to let us know what it was, moving backwards and forwards between then and now. We see the friendship between the two but we also see it all fall apart.

This is one of those books where at one point or another I suspected EVERYONE, I had no clue who to trust or who it might be. And some of the characters… there’s a phrase in Northern Ireland which perfectly describes them (and it’s one of my most favourite phrases ever).. they’re a wee bit west of the Woowah! Not entirely sure how I’m supposed to spell that and unsurprisingly spell checker was absolutely zero help. I quite liked Cleo in the now, but the person she was before, yeah, I’m not a fan, however Rachel, I don’t even know where to begin.

Lastly, the end. Wow. Sometimes I felt it was a wee bit slow getting there but it was worth it. I had the dawning as to what was going on right before it was spelt out for me. And WOW. So good.