Audiobook Review – The Grandest Game (The Grandest Game, Book 1) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Narrated by Various (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 10 hours and 12 minutes
Publisher:‎ Little, Brown Young Readers
Release Date: July 30, 2024
ASIN: B0CGVSC9DW
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Grandest Game
Source: Borrowed Audiobook from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars

“Welcome to the Grandest Game, an annual competition run by billionaire Avery Grambs and the four infamous Hawthorne brothers, whose family fortune she inherited. Designed to give anyone a shot at fame and fortune, this year’s game requires one of seven golden tickets to enter. With millions on the line, those seven players will do whatever it takes to win.

Some of the players are in it for the money. Some for power. Some for reasons all their own. Every single one of them has secrets. Amidst it all is Grayson Hawthorne, tasked with a vital role in this year’s game. But as tensions rise and the mind-bending challenges push the players to their limits—physically, mentally, and emotionally—it soon becomes clear that not everyone is playing by the rules.”

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Grandest Game series. I borrowed this audiobook from the library.

Thoughts: I wasn’t a huge fan of this book. You jump between three main characters throughout the book. I thought it was a bit odd that this starts with the second Grandest Game; it made me feel like I missed something in the first Grandest Game. Especially when the first Grandest Game is referenced throughout the book. If anyone knows if the first Grandest Game was published as short story or something and I missed it please let me know!

We spend a lot of time with characters that were introduced in The Brothers Hawthorne book, characters I didn’t really care much about. I never got to really engage with them in this book because we jump around so much. Grayson is in here a lot, and that is pretty much the only redeeming quality to this book. The other three characters are (I think, maybe there were even more POVs) all ones we met briefly in the Brothers Hawthorne. I didn’t get to spend enough time with them to care about them in this book and didn’t know them well enough from The Brothers Hawthorne book.

This is only the first part of this second Grandest Game and it takes place on a small island. The participants are trapped within the house on that island in groups of two or three and must work to solve puzzles to get out of the house by dawn. Basically, they are in complex escape rooms within the house. I didn’t find the puzzles to be nearly as intriguing or interesting as in previous books, and they were a bit hard to follow because you kept jumping between the different groups.

There is a hint that there is more going on here than just the Grandest Game. At one point, the island mysteriously looses power and there is some discussion of the contestants having sponsors. However, we don’t learn much more than that in this book. This book is more about exposing strange family secrets than anything else. I just didn’t find it as intriguing or engaging as the books in The Inheritance Games. I don’t plan on continuing the series.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. No complaints about the quality of it at all. Different narrators are used for the different POVs so you are never confused about which character POV you are listening to. If you enjoy audiobooks and want to read this book, I would recommend the audiobook.

My Summary (3/5): Overall I was disappointed in this Inheritance Games spin-off series start. Too many characters are introduced too quickly, and there is too much jumping around between them so you never get a chance to engage with any of them. The puzzles were not nearly as intriguing as in the previous books and you jumped around so much it was hard to follow them. This book was a lot more about family secrets than cool puzzle hunt adventures (which was my favorite part of the Inheritance Games). I don’t plan on continuing the series and wish Barnes would leave the Hawthorne family and start on another project.