Rules of the Game by James J. Frey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was so intrigued by the idea of Endgame. The massive amount of marketing done for the first book in this series got the name out there and made people invested – unfortunately, the series never really lived up to that hype. I enjoyed the series, but would probably give it 3 out of 5 stars. The writing was not memorable or particularly well done. I was just never impressed by the novel and can’t see myself going out of my way to recommend it to anyone. I’m sure there are people that really enjoyed this book series, but it just ended up being very middle of the road for me.
The characters were all very different, which was good but I didn’t find many of them likable or relatable. But because there were so many that the book constantly switched between, the story didn’t feel as clear as it could have been.
I do wish that I could have read the physical versions of this series because it was a little difficult to see the “clues” at times. I read part of the series on my phone and the final book on my kindle. Eventually, I stopped looking at the pictures or diagrams closely. I feel that I might have been more invested had I been able to engage in the game part of the series.
The ending of this series wasn’t very satisfying. Although Endgame has concluded, for better or worse, there’s a large part of the plot that doesn’t feel adequately addressed. If this is truly the final book (and there are no more novellas), then there are a lot of questions left unanswered.
Overall, this series is very violent and has a lot of cursing so I wouldn’t recommend it to younger teen or middle-grade readers. If you’re a fan of books that have a lot of action, fights, and a small bit of sci-fi then you might find that this is a good series for you.
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