The breakout Korean show Squid Game is captivating and shocking viewers worldwide. Whether you can’t get enough or are wary of the TV-MA rating, check out these YA dystopian thrillers – where the characters are thrown deep into playing a game, but their survival is never guaranteed!
For trigger warnings, please check out BookTriggerWarnings and/or visit Goodreads to see what other readers and reviewers have to say!
#murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil
Welcome to the near future, where good and honest citizens can enjoy watching the executions of society’s most infamous convicted felons, streaming live on The Postman app from the suburbanized prison island Alcatraz 2.0. When seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera wakes up in a haze, lying on the ground of a dimly lit warehouse, she realizes she’s about to be the next victim of the app, but Dee refuses to roll over and die for a heinous crime she didn’t commit. Can Dee and her newly formed posse, the Death Row Breakfast Club, prove she’s innocent before she ends up wrongfully murdered for the world to see? Or will The Postman’s cast of executioners kill them off one by one?
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
When Devon and Chiamaka are chosen to be their school’s top prefects, they think the school year is off to a good start – but shortly after the announcement is made, someone who goes by the name “Aces” begins to blackmail them with anonymous texts revealing their darkest secrets. With the game taking a deadly turn, Devon and Chiamaka have to stop Aces before their futures fall apart.
– New York Public Library
The Culling by Steven Dos Santons
For Lucian “Lucky” Spark, Recruitment Day means the Establishment will force him to become one of five Recruits competing to join the ruthless Imposer task force. Each Recruit participates in increasingly difficult and violent military training for a chance to advance to the next level. Those who fail must choose an “Incentive” – a family member – to be brutally killed. If Lucky fails, he’ll have to choose death for his only living relative: Cole, his four-year-old brother. Lucky will do everything he can to keep his brother alive, even if it means sacrificing the lives of other Recruits’ loved ones. What Lucky isn’t prepared for is his undeniable attraction to the handsome, rebellious Digory Tycho – but daring to care for another Recruit in a world where love is used as the ultimate weapon is extremely dangerous. As Lucky soon learns, the consequences can be deadly…
All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban
What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.
Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?
Caraval by Stephanie Garber
Sisters Scarlett and Donatella “Tella” Dragna have always dreamed of going to Caraval-a once-a-year, multiday event that is part magical spectacle, part treasure hunt. With only a week before Scarlett’s wedding to a man she’s never met, Tella runs away to Caraval and arranges for Scarlett to be abducted by a sailor named Julian and secretly taken to Caraval too. But when Scarlett arrives, she discovers that Tella has become the prize of the game, and all the players are searching for her. In order to save both herself and her sister, Scarlett must figure out the ambiguous clues and confounding puzzles and journey through a magical world where secrets and plots abound, nothing is as it seems, and no one is to be trusted.
– Publisher’s Weekly
Endgame: The Calling by James Frey
Twelve teens who have prepared their entire lives for an ancient life-or-death game must finally come to terms with its arrival, forming tenuous alliances and killing each other for the chance to be the last one standing and the winner of the ultimate prize: the ability to save a select group of people from the end of the world.
– New York Public Library
Annotations from the publishers (unless otherwise noted).
Post by Katie Smith, Reference Specialist